Of all the stuff I've read about Walter Cronkite in the last few days, by far the most interesting have been two articles from
The Daily Texan, the University of Texas's student newspaper. Cronkite was born in St. Louis in 1916, but he grew up in Houston from the age of ten, and he attended UT for two years. Everybody talks about the length of Cronkite's career, and marvels at all the world-shaking events he reported on and all the powerful people he interviewed, but the one that rocked me back on my heels was
this article from 1935, when an 18-year-old Walter Cronkite interviewed—wait for it—Gertrude Stein for
The Daily Texan, when she was visiting Austin to give a lecture at UT's Hogg Auditorium. Nothing I can say is nearly as interesting as the article itself, or the mental image of a great modernist American writer being interviewed by a skinny Texas kid who grew up to be "the most trusted man in America."
The other article is a little less earth-shaking, but still lots of fun. It's a remembrance by a former
Daily Texan writer who invited Cronkite to a party at his apartment when the anchorman was visiting UT in 1974. Much to the guy's astonishment,
Cronkite actually showed up and stayed for two hours, sipping whiskey with a bunch of students in bad 70s haircuts.
Even if you think some of the remembrances of him have bordered a bit on hagiography, you have to admire the man's lifelong intellectual curiosity and his
joie de vivre. Bon voyage, Uncle Walter.
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