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Walter Cronkite at the Kravis Center (Post File)
Post archive: Cronkite tells it like it is at Kravis Center
Former chef and Boynton journalist rush to finish tome about Cronkite’s darker side
Remembering Walter Cronkite: He was America’s reporter
Photos: The Most Trusted Man in America | 
Video | More coverage
Cronkite announcing Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon on July 20, 1969
Cronkite ended his long stint in the CBS anchor chair
There’s an old newsman’s adage that all big stories connect back to Florida, and as it happens, that was also true of the biggest old newsman of them all.
Walter Cronkite with ‘Captain’ Glen Castle, founder of the Charles F. Chapman School of Seamanship and Maritime Arts in Martin County. Cronkite served on the school’s board of trustees until 1985. Palm Beach Post file image from 1983.
Iconic CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite died Friday, and though he never lived here, over the past three decades, he made a habit of stopping in.
There’s Cronkite the speaker, at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach in 2002, trashing the state of modern journalism and quipping: “I think I could handle a butterfly ballot today.”
There’s Cronkite the almost-spaceman, who made the semifinals of NASA’s reporter in space program before it was canceled and for years enthusiastically covered shuttles soaring away from our own Cape Canaveral.
Walter Cronkite speaking in Palm Beach County (Post File Photo)
There’s Cronkite the sailor, a board member of the Charles F. Chapman School of Seamanship and Maritime Arts on the St. Lucie River in Martin County. In 1983, he bemoaned his luck: “I’ve been in Florida waters for about a month and, with the exception of a gale, I don’t think I’ve actually sailed for more than two hours. I think I’m going to give it up.”
He read the news for years, and by the time he retired, he also made it, peeking through the headlines with his rebukes and praises and worries.
In 1981, he asked a dinner audience in Palm Beach: “How could our friends in these industrial societies be so blind to go on polluting and hope something will develop to magically clear our air and water?”
And in 2002, there was Cronkite, telling The Palm Beach Post’s Kevin Thompson that he wished he’d had the timing to make Katie Couric money; that he’d been “mad about” Mary Tyler Moore, once; and that “all the time,” younger people don’t know who he is, but he’s “really very pleased” that also, sometimes, they do.
I was born in 1968 and I grew up laying on the floor in front of the TV, listening to Mr Cronkite tell us exactly how it was. I was 13 when he retired and I couldn’t imagine his replacement. I still can’t. He was a consummate professional.
His distinctive voice will be heard forever!!
Check your spelling: it’s Cape Canaveral, not Cape Carnival!!
walter cronkite and franklyn d. roosevelt were two people that we trusted, and invited into our living rooms–f.d.r. with his fireside chats, and mr cronkite with his honest reporting.
he did not tell us what the networks wanted us to hear, he did not usea teleprompter constantly, as president?? obama does.
wish that we could return to those good old days when you could believe what a reporter said.
A class act is all but missing with today’s media. Thank you Uncle Walter for laying the groundwork that few could be constant with.
With Mr. Cronkite passing so goes a better part of America. And that’s the way it was, Goodnight sir.