What They're Saying

People tuned in to his program even on routine days when his broadcast — Senate subcommittee hearings, gas prices, d?tente talks with the Soviet Union — was as dull as toast. Mr. Cronkite’s air of authority, lightly worn and unquestioned, was unusual even then, but nobody comes close to it now.

As Walter Cronkite's night of retirement from "The CBS Evening News" grew closer and closer back in 1981, there were signs of palpable public panic -- one of them a briefly popular T-shirt on which was printed the horrified rhetorical question, "Oh, my God -- what are we going to do without Walter Cronkite?

For two generations of Americans, Cronkite was a witness to history who also helped shaped perceptions of it. Although he rarely displayed emotion on camera, those moments are seared into the nation's collective consciousness -- Cronkite tearing up while announcing the assassination of John F. Kennedy, decrying the "thugs" at the 1968 Democratic National Convention or exclaiming "Go, baby, go!" as Apollo 11 lifted off for the moon 40 years ago this week.

As anchorman of "CBS Evening News" from 1962 to 1981, Mr. Cronkite elevated the role of television news presenter from a script reader to that arbiter of truth called an anchorman.

The term originally signified his role as tether to a far-flung news crew, but Mr. Cronkite imbued it with new gravitas. His Middle-American warmth—he once likened himself to "a comfortable old shoe"—led to an equally popular nickname, Uncle Walter. He became famous for his nightly sign-off, "And that's the way it is."

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The baritone-voiced broadcaster took the helm of the "CBS Evening News" in 1962 and became the face of American news for two tumultuous decades.