Being the Most Trusted Man in America while quasi-retired proved to be an unbeatable fund-raising ploy for Cronkite. What well-heeled liberal philanthropist wouldn’t want to donate to a Cronkite-championed cause? In 1986, Cronkite raised over $300,000 for the Walter Cronkite Regents Chair in Communications at his alma mater, the University of Texas. It took a single night, during which he was roasted by some of his celebrated friends. Finding any faults to spoof was difficult—so comic Dick Cavett spoofed that very unusual personality trait: “I’m taking the easy way out,” he said. “I’m going to use all the jokes I used at the Mother Teresa roast.”
The kingdaddy of all honors Cronkite received was having the School of Journalism at Arizona State University named for him in 1984. Money was raised for the Cronkite School by Tom Chauncey, who in 1948 had purchased the radio station KPHO in Phoenix with his friend, cowboy icon Gene Autry. Chauncey was born in Houston and moved to Phoenix when he was thirteen years old. He was an early proponent of turning Cronkite’s CBS Evening News broadcast from fifteen to thirty minutes, and then, once that was accomplished, he lobbied Black Rock for a sixty-minute nightly news broadcast. Being an advocate for longer newscasts was the perfect way to bond with Cronkite. The Cronkite family started visiting Arizona on mini-holidays.
Chauncey just loved old Cronkite, whom he called “The Commodore,” like Ashford, even when the broadcaster was on a horse. Over drinks in Scottsdale one evening, Chauncey had talked with Bill Shover of the Arizona Republic, his son Tom Chauncey II, and other Valley of the Sun media leaders about doing something very special to honor Walter. There had been talk about building a new school of journalism at Arizona State University. Why not name it for the beloved anchorman? Chauncey telephoned Cronkite after his official retirement from the CBS Evening News. Could ASU name a new journalism school for him? A grateful Cronkite said yes. On April 27, 1984, the Arizona Board of Regents changed the name of the journalism program to honor the CBS legend. “We started answering the telephone the next day with ‘Cronkite School,’ ” said Doug Anderson, who led the school for most of its first quarter century.
In 2004, Arizona State University decided to build a new home for the Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication with Chauncey’s financial help. At 235,000 square feet and six stories tall, the school, finished in 2008, instantly became a downtown Phoenix landmark. Once construction began in 2007, Cronkite, by then ninety years old, took a keen interest in the ASU project. Somehow it seemed fitting that while Murrow’s legacy was being celebrated at Harvard-Tufts, Cronkite got Phoenix. He had always hoped that average Americans—more than elites—would celebrate his broadcasting career. “One of my biggest pleasures was that as the steel frames went up, Walter came to visit the construction site for an on-the-spot inspection,” architect Stephen Erlich recalled. “He showed tons of excitement. But he was frail. He couldn’t go up high. But boy . . . did he have a sparkle in his eye.”
With the help of friends, Cronkite found his elder-statesman groove in the late 1980s. William Paley, whose own position in his company was shaky during the 1980s, ushered Cronkite onto the board in 1981. The intrigues at the corporate level in that decade became the stuff of media legend, as Thomas Wyman, a competent CEO of CBS, threatened to quit in 1983 if he wasn’t given Paley’s title as chairman as well. The directors tossed sentiment aside, ousted Paley after more than fifty years at the helm, and elected Wyman. Within a few years, the company was foundering, failing either to uphold its old prestige or to produce a strong response to new satellite and Internet technology. When the board members, including Cronkite, learned that Wyman’s strategy for saving the company was a secret plan to sell it to the Coca-Cola Corporation, headquartered in Atlanta, they withdrew their support for him. Wyman had no choice but to resign.
In 1985, Ted Turner, who founded CNN and became the dominant force in cable television, waged a serious takeover bid for CBS. Nicknamed the “Mouth of the South,” Turner, the Atlanta-based media maverick, had a plan that called for the sale of CBS assets such as the record and book-publishing divisions to raise capital to pay for the purchase of the Tiffany Network. In the end, though, he promised to make the CBS television network the center of a cable television empire he had started with CNN. Turner loved the prestigious past of CBS à la Murrow and Cronkite, but he also understood the future of satellite television better than almost anyone in the world. “I tried to buy all of the networks,” he recalled. “CBS was the one that was doable in the end; the math worked. Acquiring CBS wasn’t an easy thing no matter how you slice it. And I engendered opposition.” Cronkite had bonded with Turner at the 1977 America’s Cup in Newport, Rhode Island, while on rare assignment for 60 Minutes. It’s no exaggeration to say that Cronkite was in awe of Turner’s Courageous (an aluminum-hulled twelve-meter yacht). “Ted, how about letting me steer?” Cronkite asked. To which Turner snapped, “Sure, Walter, if you let me do the Evening News. (Cronkite never allowed Turner to sit in his anchor chair, but he did get a turn being captain of the Courageous.)
As Ken Auletta documented in Media Man, Turner had numerous enemies at CBS who wanted to squash his purchase of the network. Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt questioned Turner’s “moral fitness” to own CBS, deeming him an unsophisticated redneck. Cronkite, by contrast, thought Turner the best thing since sliced bread. The directors followed Paley’s lead in resisting Turner’s bold bid to buy CBS. Within a short time, Paley found a willing billionaire, Laurence Tisch of the Loews Corporation, to help fend off the Turner incursion. Mostly, CBS foiled Turner by borrowing money and buying back its own stock, taking on a crippling level of debt in the process. As a result, the network was left with even greater financial problems than before.
After a short time, in 1986, Larry Tisch was named chairman of CBS. The sixty-three-year-old Tisch hailed from Brooklyn and made his financial fortune opening hotels in Atlantic City and the Catskills and, with his brother, overseeing Loews Theaters. With an impeccable business career, he seemed to be a white knight with the best intentions for CBS. He soon demonstrated, though, that he didn’t understand the company at all, except as a vehicle to increase the wealth of savvy investors. In the time-tested and much-resented way of corporate raiders, he sold off CBS’s assets—just as Turner had been expected to do. Tisch went further, however, eviscerating the workforce at the network while authorizing very little capital for the development of new programming or technology. CBS, which had been a leader almost from the start of the broadcasting industry, missed the opportunity to invest in itself in the cable era.
Cronkite, given a seat at the table, tried to interest the board in decisions regarding the fabric of CBS programming. With Paley’s health wavering, he hoped that the board could step up and exert itself to uphold the CBS standard. Given his druthers, he preferred Turner to Tisch. At least if CNN and CBS merged, foreign bureaus wouldn’t be shuttered. (Back in 1967, he had publicly insisted that news gathering had to be global.) He found, however, that his fellow board members were primarily interested in the accounting end of operations, not in what Cronkite called “the philosophy” of programming: its goals and its parameters. More specifically, he tried to argue that the board should insist upon a high standard of hard news on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, for the sake of higher ratings, if not journalistic integrity. Like an old bison left behind by the herd, Cronkite didn’t make an impact at Black Rock. It was some consolation for him that Tisch didn’t like Rather, and lobbied the new CBS News president to hire Bob Schieffer to replace Dashing Dan. “There was talk, which Cronkite was a part of, to fire Rather and have me take his place,” Schieffer recalled. “Up until then, Dan liked me sitting in for him as substitute. It was Diane Sawyer at 60 Minutes he felt threatened by. But now I was seen as Cronkite’s guy, and that didn’t sit well with Dan.”
When Cronkite turned seventy on November 4, 1986, he was excused from further CBS board service, in accordance with a rule
that had been recently implemented by Tisch. By odd edict, Walter Cronkite was considered too old to sit in the luxurious surroundings of a boardroom and discuss business issues. CBS under Tisch treated Cronkite, as the bluegrass standard puts it, as “Old and in the Way.” This led to a dispute in 1988 about whether Cronkite would end up relinquishing his status as a CBS special correspondent. His contract would expire that year. Cronkite assured friends that his armor was strong, that the boot didn’t hurt. But his assurances had a hollow ring to them. “There was a feeling that Walter was a man without a country,” Andy Rooney recalled. “He started exploring all sorts of theories about World Federation.”
Like many people hitting their twilight years, Cronkite took the time to try to mend various strained relationships. Because Friendly apologized for his role in the dethroning of Cronkite at the 1964 convention, all was copacetic. Often Cronkite and Friendly would go out to lunch or dinner to discuss the early days of TV news. Among their shared accomplishments was the “D-Day Plus 20 Years” interview with Eisenhower on Omaha Beach. Friendly held seminars at Columbia University, and Cronkite made a few unadvertised guest appearances. They discussed making another record about the 1960s in the vein of I Can Hear It Now (Friendly’s historical album collaboration with Edward R. Murrow). “I remember us going to dinner with Walter and Betsy and the Rooneys, Andy and Marguerite,” recalled Ruth Friendly, widow of the legendary television maverick. “Suddenly a young man came toward the table, seemingly wanting to meet Cronkite and Rooney, both TV celebrities. Instead, he came up and told Fred that he had changed his life by offering sound advice via a Columbia course. Walter and Andy were ignored. It was hilarious.” At a wake for Gordon Mannings’s wife, Edna, Roger Mudd suggested to Cronkite that they form a new network—the Old Guy Network (OGN News), staffed by codgers like Pierpoint, Herman, Benton, Reasoner, Stringer, Mudd, and Cronkite. According to Mudd, Cronkite was “amused by the prospect.”
A great healing also took place between Paley and Cronkite in December 1989. The Museum of Broadcasting in New York held a gala celebration honoring Cronkite’s extraordinary career. This must have been the fifteenth or twentieth such event Cronkite had endured since stepping down as the CBS anchorman. Paley, his body long ago having lost its vigor, had poured his heart and soul into writing a tribute speech worthy of Ted Sorensen. But instead of giving the JFK inaugural, Paley ended up, like Robert Frost, fumbling with his notes at the lectern, deviating from the script in an awkward way, even finding it hard to breathe. At eighty-three years old, Paley was having a senior moment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t read this.”
He then launched into ad-lib mode, talking authoritatively about Cronkite’s virtues, praising his sterling performance as CBS anchorman from 1962 to 1981. An honest feistiness burst forth when he acknowledged that CBS News was the house of both Murrow and Cronkite. When Paley finished, the crowd went wild, stomping its feet and roaring as if Reggie Jackson had just whacked a grand slam over the right-field fence at Yankee Stadium. “Everyone was dying at the thought that he would humiliate himself,” one guest recalled. “They wanted him to be Paley. When he saved himself, there was a thrill.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Defiant Liberal
SPACE SHUTTLE DREAMS—CHALLENGER DISASTER—ROLLING STONE ADVISOR—DRUMMING AWAY WITH MICKEY HART—OFF WITH RATHER’S HEAD—FEUD OVER JFK ASSASSINATION ANNIVERSARY—SHIPPING OFF PERSONAL PAPERS—WRITING HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY—IS THE EVENING NEWS DEAD?—KILL THEM ALL—FROZEN OUT OF HOUSTON—ANGRY AT DUKAKIS—BARBARA JORDAN AND THE DEFENSE OF LIBERALISM—ECO-WARRIOR REDUX—PULLING FOR SHAW—HARD DOVE OF THE GULF WAR—HITCHING HIS WAGON TO THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL—SALUTING CNN—TOASTING THE DEATH OF COMMUNISM WITH BUSH—CLINTON WINS—GOOD-BYE TO BUSH
When word reached Cronkite that President Reagan would soon be was accepting applications from civilians to join a mission into space, he was among the first to say send me. On August 27, 1984, Reagan had announced that a new “Spaceflight Participant Program” would expand the group of individuals who could fly on the Space Shuttle to common citizens, including teachers, artists, and journalists. It was a way to excite taxpayers about the Space Shuttle. Around that time, Cronkite had narrated an IMAX film about the Shuttle, The Dream Is Alive, and was flush with excitement about possibly being the first journalist to orbit Earth. Due to his prominence, combined with a fine track record for promoting all things NASA, Cronkite thought he would make a superior civilian astronaut. On July 19, 1985, Vice President George H. W. Bush announced that a teacher—thirty-seven-year-old Christa McAuliffe of New Hampshire—would become the first civilian in space. But that the second billet would indeed go to a reporter. Cronkite was ready to flat-out win the competition. On October 5, NASA directed a Project Steering Committee to work with the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communications (ASJMC) at the University of South Carolina in Columbia to draft a process for selecting a journalist to fly in space in the fall of 1986 as the second private citizen embedded on the Shuttle. NASA made the announcement of the “Journalist in Space” program on October 24, and on December 3, ASJMC started mailing applications to those that requested them. Cronkite, behaving like a high school student applying to college, eagerly filled out all the paperwork, determined to be chosen.
Cronkite knew he was in fine flying trim. His diet was going well, his heart was sound, and he lifted weights daily. Whenever possible, he played tennis with Andy Rooney, outdoors whenever the weather permitted. Welcoming a NASA physical with open arms, Cronkite filled out the ten-page NASA medical history questionnaire. NASA dubbed these potential new civilian astronauts “space flight participants” (SFPs). Eric Johnson, project director of the NASA recruiting program, told People magazine that there was “reasonably no age limit for the flight, only whoever is chosen has to have a good heart.” If shortlisted as one of the first-round candidates, Cronkite agreed to undergo ninety-nine hours of vigorous training. In a “personal essay” for NASA, Cronkite wrote that the “principal thing” a reporter offered space exploration was the removal of “the last lingering suspicion” that the Space Shuttle was a boondoggle. Astronaut John Young was dismissive of the entire SFP program. “I sure want that first guy to be checked out by the FBI,” Young told Michener, whose 1982 book Space was a bestseller, “I don’t want to be babysitting some kook.”
Cronkite’s campaign to become a NASA citizen astronaut intensified during the summer of 1984. David Friend, who covered the space program for Life magazine and later went on to become an editor for Vanity Fair, caught wind of the rumor that Cronkite was vigorously pursuing the SFP voyager slot. Looking for a groundswell of publicity for his candidacy, Cronkite granted Life an exclusive interview and photo shoot in Edgartown. Hoping to get Cronkite in costume, Friend was able to procure an official light blue NASA space shuttle uniform from the Johnson Space Center. “So I got the space suit and flew up to Martha’s Vineyard,” Friend recalled. “I carried the astronaut helmet in my lap. Our half-baked idea was to have Cronkite pose in the uniform. The notion was that he was really ready for space.”
To Friend’s surprise, Cronkite snatched the space suit and helmet from him and charged upstairs to change into it. No questions asked. As Friend waited in the living room, Cronkite’s nonagenarian mother, Helen, stood in the foyer expectantly. A few minutes later, Cronkite came clomping down the stairs dressed like John Glenn about to depart on a Mercury mission. “Oh, Walter,” she exclaimed, “you look amazing!” For half an hour, Cronkite paraded around Edgartown as if he’d leaped out of chapter four of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, stretching credulity, posing for Life photos, waving to all the kids like a costumed Donald Duck at Disney World, proud to be a NASA astronaut for an afternoon.
On Tuesday January 28, 1986, Challenger lifted off from Kennedy Space Center and exploded. McAuliffe and the six astronauts on board died. Cronkite was vacationing in Santiago, Chile, at the time of the Challenger disaster bu
t granted the Associated Press an interview. Full of stoicism, he insisted that the Space Shuttle program should continue regardless of the Challenger tragedy. “We have come a long way in Space, and there is still so much to be done out there,” he said. “There are scientific, industrial, medical bounties to be reaped in Space. To diminish what we have done in the past would be to dishonor those who have lost their lives in that program on Challenger today.” That May, when Walt Disney World in Florida opened the EPCOT Center attraction Spaceship Earth, Cronkite was selected to be the show’s narrator. Having been chosen by NASA as one of the forty semi-finalists for “Journalist in Space” in July 1986, Cronkite used the EPCOT occasion to praise McAuliffe as a marvelous role model for American girls. But before long, while the Space Shuttle itself resumed operation, the “Journalist in Space” program was scrubbed.
For a CBS News Special in 1986 about the end of the cold war in Europe, Cronkite traveled to Russia, Hungary, and East Germany. “People are always calling up with things that sound interesting that I think I am going to have time to do,” he explained to USA Today reporter Morten Lund. “I have never done so much wheeling and dealing. My wife, Betsy, has taken to standing over me on the telephone, shaking her head and mouthing, ‘NO.’ ”
Imbued with a blind willingness to talk to anyone, even the proverbial potted plant, Cronkite labeled himself a “hangoutologist.” Even if he were strapped to a torture rack, Cronkite would find a way to babble niceties about the exquisite chamber lighting or the dungeon stone. To such an extrovert, Manhattan nightlife was understandably one of life’s exquisite pleasures. “When the new morality hit in the late 60s, early 70s—the singles bars and that scene—I would like to have dipped into that,” Cronkite told The Washington Post. “I was interested in it. I don’t mean as a sexual participant. But I’d have liked to have gone into some of the First and Second Avenue bars. I enjoy the tavern scene. It’s a great way to meet people, talk to people. Hair’s down. It’s no longer possible because people surround me. They want to talk, but there is a little wall between us. They’re talking to somebody they want to impress.”
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