and that’s the way it is……

I always thought if God had a voice, it was Walter Cronkite.  That voice was silenced forever on Friday.

Any words I write would be too shallow, too hollow, too insignificant to underscore the importance of this man who I trusted throughout my youth.

Beginning from the time of my earliest memory, his voice resonated with news of the assassination of JFK to Vietnam to Apollo to Martin Luther King to Woodstock to Watergate to Iran.  He even introduced us and Ed Sullivan to the Beatles.  More recently, he was the voice of experience, of reason.

There were times he wept on the air, and we wept with him.  He was the truth.  He brought perspective.  He was our conscience.

His voice was everywhere.  On Satuday mornings, he was teaching me history on “You Are There” and “The Twentieth Century”. 

I think about my kids when  I think of someone as substantial as Walter Cronkite.  How do I tell them the importance of this man, the man who narrated the “Spaceship Earth” ride at Disney World? 

There is no parallel in society- nobody- not Oprah, not Obama, not Billy Graham.

And now he’s gone.