Walter Cronkite and The Grateful Dead

You will never meet anyone who is as warm and as much of a gentleman as Walter Cronkite. He loved music, he loved the Grateful Dead. He collected drums, including one from the drummer of the Grateful Dead. He adopted them and they adopted him; he was totally a fan. There were many sides to Walter.

Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports

Who knew?

When I took the class "Television News in America" at Yale -- taught by Tom Brokaw, who was then co-anchor of The Today Show, and who drove up to New Haven one day a week to teach it in the winter and spring of 1979 -- I got to meet Cronkite on our day-long class trip to New York (as well as Dan Rather, John Chancellor, David Halberstam, Jane Pauley -- it was quite the day!). The 15 of us in the class (selected competitively out of over 400 Yale students who applied) spent the morning at NBC, on the set of The Today Show and in a seminar with Halberstam, then split into three small groups to watch the production of the nightly news programs at the three networks, from the mid-afternoon conferences up through the broadcasts. I was in the CBS group and was actually on-set as Cronkite delivered the news that night. I stood next to Rather right behind the camera -- that set was small! It was a thrilling experience. I remember Cronkite being as warm and gentlemanly as everyone is recalling today.

The only downside to the day was that Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau -- Pauley's husband (still) and a Yale grad -- was supposed to join us all for dinner, but didn't (he is famously shy); however, John Chancellor and Brokaw as dinner companions are nothing to sneeze at.