He attended college at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), entering in the fall term of 1933,[13] where he worked on the Daily Texan and became a member of the Nu chapter of the Chi Phi fraternity.

[13] Cronkite left college in his junior year, in the fall term of 1935,[13] after starting a series of newspaper reporting jobs covering news and sports.

He was granted permission to be flown the rest of the distance to Norfolk so that he could outpace a rival correspondent on USS Massachusetts to return to the US and to issue the first uncensored news reports to be published about Operation Torch.

In 1964 he was temporarily replaced by the team of Robert Trout and Roger Mudd; this proved to be a mistake, and Cronkite returned to the anchor chair for future political conventions.

Although NBC finally settled on the skilled and well-respected broadcast journalist John Chancellor, Cronkite proved to be more popular and continued to be top-rated until his retirement in 1981.

[38] Because of the magnitude of the story and the continuous flow of information coming from various sources, time was of the essence but the camera would take at least twenty minutes to become operational under normal circumstances.

The decision was made to dispatch Cronkite to the CBS Radio Network booth to report the events and play the audio over the television airwaves while the crew worked on the camera to see if they could get it set up quicker.

[38] At 2:00 pm EST, with the top of the hour station break looming, Cronkite told the audience that there would be a brief pause so that all of CBS' affiliates, including those in the Mountain and Pacific time zones which were not on the same schedule, could join the network.

Cronkite reminded the audience, again, of the attempt made on the life of the President and tossed to KRLD news director Eddie Barker at the Dallas Trade Mart, where Kennedy was supposed to be making a speech before he was shot.

At 2:38 pm EST, while filling in time with some observations about the security presence in Dallas, which had been increased due to violent acts against United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson in the city earlier that year, Cronkite was handed a new bulletin.

[41]With emotion still in his voice and eyes watering, Cronkite once again recapped the events after collecting himself, incorporating some wire photos of the visit and explaining the significance of the pictures now that Kennedy was dead.

The two major pieces of information involved the Oath of Office being administered to now-President Johnson, and that Dallas police had arrested a man named Lee Harvey Oswald whom they suspected had fired the fatal shots.

For the next four days, along with his colleagues, Cronkite continued to report segments of uninterrupted coverage of the assassination, including the announcement of Oswald's death in the hands of Jack Ruby on Sunday.

If in the search of our conscience we find a new dedication to the American concepts that brought no political, sectional, religious or racial divisions, then maybe it may yet be possible to say that John Fitzgerald Kennedy did not die in vain.

"[42]In a 2003 CBS special commemorating the 40th anniversary of the assassination, Cronkite recalled his reaction upon having the death confirmed to him, he said: And when you finally had to say it's official, the President is dead...pretty tough words in a situation like that.

[52] Several weeks later, Johnson, who sought to preserve his legacy and was now convinced his declining health could not withstand growing public criticism,[53][54] announced he would not seek reelection.

[58] Cronkite is also remembered for his coverage of the United States space program, and at times was visibly enthusiastic, rubbing his hands together on camera with a smile and uttering, "Whew...boy" on July 20, 1969, when the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission put the first men on the Moon.

[62] At approximately 6:38 pm Eastern Time, while a pre-recorded report that the Vietnam peace talks in Paris had been successful was being played for the audience, Cronkite received a telephone call in the studio while off camera.

Once he was told he was back on the air, Cronkite briefly nodded and held up one of his fingers to let the audience and studio crew know he needed a moment to let Johnson finish talking before he relayed the topic of conversation to the nation watching.

*pauses to wait for response* Colonel George McGranahan, who was the man who proclaimed the President dead upon arrival at Brooke Army General Hospital, in San Antonio.

[63]During the final ten minutes of that broadcast, Cronkite reported on the death, giving a retrospective on the life of the nation's 36th president, and announced that CBS would air a special on Johnson later that evening.

[69] In 1983, he reported on the British general election for the ITV current affairs series World In Action, interviewing, among many others, the victorious Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

[78] Prior to his death, "Uncle Walter" hosted a number of TV specials and was featured in interviews about the times and events that occurred during his career as America's "most trusted" man.

on A&E (not related to the documentary of the same title hosted by Christopher Reeve on CBS six years earlier), and a 1994 follow-up series, Ape Man: The Story of Human Evolution.

Cronkite criticized the present system of campaign finance which allows elections to "be purchased" by special interests, and he noted that all the European democracies "provide their candidates with extensive free airtime.

"[82] "In fact," Cronkite pointed out, "of all the major nations worldwide that profess to have democracies, only seven – just seven – do not offer free airtime"[82] This put the United States on a list with Ecuador, Honduras, Malaysia, Taiwan, Tanzania, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Among many journalists who attended were[105] Tom Brokaw, Connie Chung, Katie Couric, Charles Gibson, Matt Lauer, Dan Rather, Andy Rooney, Morley Safer, Diane Sawyer, Bob Schieffer, Meredith Vieira, Barbara Walters, and Brian Williams.

"[109] Affectionately known as "Uncle Walter", he covered many of the important news events of the era so effectively that his image and voice are closely associated with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the Watergate scandal.

Cronkite was helped in compiling the materials for his autobiography by Don Carleton, executive director for the Center for American History in the early 1990s,[129] which was published as A Reporter's Life in 1996.

[132][133] Cronkite passed on the Moon rock to Bill Powers, president of the University of Texas at Austin, and it became part of the collection at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.