It was less than four
months ago when the tragedy in Newtown left me wordless. That weekend
before Christmas 2012, I idly sat in front of my computers, both in my office
and at home. Shocked and saddened, I
contemplated the tragic event at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Very slowly that day, the column I was writing
materialized. I wrote about Fred Rogers and Rabbi Harold Kushner and
listed their books and others that might help readers find their way to
understanding this terrible event. I added that 2013 would be the 20th
anniversary of the Random Acts of Kindness movement, and I urged readers
to continue spreading compassion across the world on a daily basis.
Today, one day after the
horrific events in Boston on Patriot’s Day, I abandoned writing my column about
scrappy science writer Mary Roach. It seemed disrespectful to make fun with
words and chat about Mary Roach’s sometimes irreverent take on science. I just
didn’t have it in me to find humor anywhere. It wasn’t writer’s block as much
as it was confusion and despair as Boston, and the world, cried collective
tears.
Today, idly staring at
my computer screen and trying to fiddle with my keyboard, I remembered a
similar time I was shocked with grief and disbelief – November 22, 1963. I
was 11 years old, home sick for the day when our black and white television
screen went blank some minutes before noon (PST). Neighbors gathered on the
lawns and my mother repeatedly answered the phone. We shivered in grief
and refused to accept the words interrupting our lives. It was, perhaps, the
very first day I realized that life sometimes got things very wrong.
“We Interrupt This
Broadcast” by Joe Garner is a series of editions of books published since the
late 1990s. Our library owns one version, and there are three others
in the Minuteman Library System. The long version of the titles varies: “We
Interrupt This Broadcast: Relive the Events That Stopped Our Lives – From
Hindenburg to the Death of Princess Diana” to “ - From Hindenburg to the
Virginia Tech Shooting.” The books include two or three audio
compact discs that include the original recordings and recount the details of
the events. Many photographs in the books tell the stories.
Included in these books
are the audio broadcasts of Walter Cronkite whose newscasts were a nighttime
tradition for many for many of us for nearly two decades - 1962 and 1981. It was Walter
Cronkite's voice we heard crack in grief when he announced to us that President
John F. Kennedy had died.
Austin Ken Kutscher is
the author of “Watching Walter Cronkite: Reflections on Growing up in the
1950s and 1960s” (2009). The Newton Public Library in the Minuteman
Library Network is the only library that owns a copy of this book, but I found
the story quite intriguing. Kutscher realized that his daughter did not share
the collective memory of his generation. The nation’s anxiety in the
60s – the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the deaths of the Kennedy
brothers and Martin Luther King, and the racial injustices of the eras that
Baby Boomers knew all too well – had not been experienced by subsequent
generations. Kutscher recounts many of those memories, including Woodstock and
the Apollo XI Moon Landing as they were portrayed on the nightly news. He
describes how the lives of a generation were shaped by these life-altering
events.
A comprehensive
biography of Walter Cronkite was published last year. It
includes many plates of photographs and illustrations in its 819 pages. In
this book, “Cronkite” (2012), Douglas Brinkley describes the journalist’s and
broadcaster’s achievements and explains why we felt he was “the most trusted
man in America.” Walter Cronkite was not only witness to so
many events from his birth in 1916 to his days covering the Allied troops and
the first televised Olympic Games, but he sometimes he witnessed them for us.
Walter Cronkite retired
from CBS news over thirty years ago. His nightly newscasts ended just a few
weeks after the hostages were released from Iran and a few months before Diane
married Prince Charles. His successors reported on events throughout the last
decades of the Twentieth Century including the Challenger and Columbia space
shuttle disasters and the fall of communism in the Soviet Union.
Walter Cronkite died at
the age of 92 in 2009. “Conversations with Cronkite” was published
in 2010 by the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History includes selections of
interviews held between Dr. Don Carleton, a master historian and his friend,
Walter Cronkite. Carleton interviewed the acclaimed journalist many
times and these meetings comprise the book giving readers a rare glimpse
into the life of Walter Cronkite in his own words.
Social media,
around-the-clock news channels, and constant smartphone updates have ended our
need to wait for the evening news. Yet, those outlets haven’t ended our need for consoling words of wisdom. Staring at my computer screen and my office
walls today, I wondered what words Walter Cronkite would have used to describe
the sad events for Boston on Monday, April 15.
So many events, both
earthshattering and awe inspiring, have happened since Cronkite’s final
broadcast; most remarkably 9-11. Cronkite’s 1981 retirement didn’t end his
commentary, however. He contributed to the narration of the
remarkable series of 8 DVDs, “America at War” and contributed essays to
National Public Radio. “Cronkite Remembers” is a collection of 3 DVDs
published in 2002. Many of Walter Cronkite’s DVDs of history and
pivotal events in our American experience are available through the
Minuteman Library Network. Visit the library’s website and the
link to the Minuteman Library Network to put one of them on hold. You
may also call 781-769-0200 and speak to a librarian who will place the request
for you.
