Cronkite: Newsman. Water skier?

Walter Cronkite, the legendary TV newsman, died last month at the ripe old age of 92. I’m certain in his last years he didn’t  remember the time I let go of his right ankle and he went kerplunk into Acapulco Bay. I’ve told this story before but couldn’t help but return to it in the memory banks upon the news of Cronkite’s death.

CBS aired a special documentary a few weeks ago. It recalled the career of the man who made television into the media in which people were able to see the news happening before their eyes. The documentary ended with the words Cronkite capped his newscasts: “And that’s the way it was.�

It wasn’t always that way. During television’s birth pains, networks were barely devoting 15 minutes a day to real news.

That all changed when Edward R. Murrow put together his dream team of newspaper journalists and they went from radio to television without missing a beat. But of all of them, the man and the voice most trusted by his fellow Americans was Walter Cronkite.

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As a youngster in Houston, young Walter was swept up into the world of newspapering on the Houston Chronicle. I knew little of what motivated him to devote his life to journalism until just last week when my good wife presented me with Cronkite’s prize-winning autobiography.

Fascinating how so many events in his life mirrored mine.

Young Walter spent time covering crime and punishment from the Houston police reporter’s press room. An older reporter took him under his wing and gave him the rundown on what and who were important and who were the phonies and quacks.

I had just such a mentor when I was a cub reporter on the Detroit Free Press. Every morning I hurried off to the Free Press Desk in the Federal Court Press Room. An older reporter, long past his best years, showed me the ropes.

Then Cronkite left Houston and joined the United Press. I left the Free Press, joined United Press, and covered the first big strike after the end of World War II against General Motors by the UAW. The union men and women had loyally worked throughout the conflict producing war machines, without a raise.

Now at war’s end GM was ready to unveil its first line of new cars; the union workers wanted their piece of the pie. I spent many days practically sitting on the lap of Walter Reuther, the charismatic head of the UAW. He was extremely likeable, and I was shocked when he was shot in the shoulder by a bullet fired through his kitchen window. It is widely believed that gambling syndicates shot Reuther, incensed when he tried to eradicate the numbers rackets from the factory’s floors.

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   Cronkite didn’t cover labor disputes. He put his life on the line flying bombing missions in Flying Fortresses when they didn’t have fighter escort to Germany. The Eighth Air Force lost a shocking number of planes and crews.

Cronkite then covered the Korean War. And when it seemed that there was no end in sight to the bloody Vietnam war, he went to see for himself. Stunned at the loss of life and by the generals who kept saying we just needed 100,000 more troops for victory, Cronkite returned and reluctantly said it was a war we couldn’t win.

President Lyndon Johnson was shocked. “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America,� he muttered and ended his presidency.

And who can forget when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas? It was early afternoon. Cronkite read a wire report that there had been shooting around JFK’s motorcade. “We’re going on the air,� he said, interrupting the scheduled show.

A half-hour later, Cronkite announced that President John F. Kennedy was dead. In a moment that no one who saw it will ever forget, this objective, hard-bitten newsman who had seen death in wars all over the world, took off his horn rim glasses as tears welled up in his eyes. We all cried with him.

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Now let’s put war behind us and turn the clock back to the week-long celebration that Conrad Hilton staged when he opened his first hotel in Mexico City. Celebrities and travel writers were flown to Mexico from both coasts. I was travel editor at the time of the New York Herald Tribune.

After parties, sightseeing tours and a bull fight, we were airlifted to the beautiful resort of Acapulco, to the beachside villa of the president of Mexico.

After gazing unabashedly at Lana Turner, I attacked the sumptuous buffet table. Pleasantly over-stuffed, I strolled down to the water’s edge. In a moment, Jinx Falkenburg, a gorgeous Spanish model, sat down next to me. Along came a sturdy man with muscled calves. He wanted to go water skiing.

Walter Cronkite had never been on water skis before. I put his right ankle in the right ski, Jinx did the honors with his other foot. Walter grabbed the reins. “Vamanos,� I shouted to the boat capitan.

The boat exploded into motion.Walter fell head-first into the surf. Kerplunk. A determined man, he tried two more times. Two more kerplunks. OK, Barney, he said, it’s your turn. Chalk up three kerplunks for Barney.

Jinx put on both skis herself, shooing away our willing hands. She signaled the boatman and in a jiffy was gracefully skiing round and round Acapulco Bay.

Two chastened newsmen, the famous Walter Cronkite and the Trib’s travel scrivener, slogged back up the beach to the beverage tent. We were in dire need of a pitcher of margaritas.

After that we both vacationed on Martha’s Vineyard, he at the helm of a 48-foot ketch, I managing the sheets of a 13-foot Sunfish.

   Barnett Laschever, the curmudgeon of Goshen, now in his anecdotage, has a story to tell for nearly every world-shaking event. Ask him about the time he traveled through the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan.