I’m a bit late to the reception after the passing of Walter Cronkite, as I was away for a long weekend – but I thought I’d tell you a personal story that’s too cool not to share.

He and I were speakers at a UN teaching conference in NY a few years back. I did my usual ill-prepared seat-of-the-pants presentation to a frighteningly large crowd, which was inexplicably well-received, then Cronkite took his turn. His presentation was surprisingly opinion-filled for someone we were used to seeing as the consummate impartial anchor. He was searingly critical of the Bush administration. It was riveting. He received a standing ovation, and then a crowd descended upon him to shake his hand and get autographs. My wife and I watched from afar as he spent about five minutes working his way politely but diligently through the crowd toward his intended destination, which was, to my shock, my wife and I.
He smiled and held out his hand to shake mine, and said “young man, that was tremendous. I love your work.”
I gathered my composure, and we had a long chat – and turned out we had many things in common. We were both selling syndicated features. His, a column. At the time I was carried in more newspapers than him, so he asked my advice (!) on getting into more, and I told him he needed to weasel his way into some of the larger papers to build some “name recognition.” We also discovered he lived very close to my wife’s grandparents, and so he invited us to his house for a drink and an outing on his boat next time we were in town. I was dumbfounded, as you can imagine.
I’ve met many celebrities through my work, but I have never met one so unassuming, and exuding genuine warmth and curiosity as Walter Cronkite.

I never did call him when we were in town. A large part of me didn’t want to intrude –
Always told myself I’d call him “next time,” you know?