Cronkite (28 page)

A family outing to the seaside city of Galveston, Texas, in 1930.
Bottom row:
Walter sitting between his grandparents, Matilda and Edward C. Fritsche.
Top row:
Walter’s parents, Helen and Walter Cronkite Sr.
(Whitehurst Photos)

Cronkite on the day of his graduation from San Jacinto High School in Houston, Texas, 1933.
(Whitehurst Photos)

On March 22, 1935,
The Daily Texan
, the student newspaper at the University of Texas, led with a Cronkite scoop: his interview with literary figure Gertrude Stein, who was then visiting the campus. According to his article, he found her to be “genuine—the real thing in person. Her thinking is certainly straightforward; her speech is the same.”
(Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)

Cronkite at college, in a photograph taken for the
Cactus
, the yearbook of the University of Texas. The picture was probably taken in 1935, the year Cronkite left school. The young woman in the open photo book is Cronkite’s high school girlfriend, Cornelia “Bit” Winter.
(Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)

“Walter Wilcox,” better known as Walter Cronkite, preparing for a 1936 broadcast at KCMO, a Kansas City radio station. Cronkite was the sports director at the station, where a bright young woman named Betsy Maxwell soon started working as an advertising copywriter. They began dating and were married four years later.
(Whitehurst Photos)

Cronkite during a 1937 radio interview with Beryl Clark, future star quarterback for the University of Oklahoma football team. Throughout the 1937 season, Cronkite broadcast Oklahoma football games for WKY, in Oklahoma City.
(Whitehurst Photos)

Walter and Betsy Cronkite, shortly after their 1940 wedding.
(Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)

Cronkite at work for United Press during World War II while wearing the uniform authorized by the Army for credentialed correspondents. After the United States joined the Allies, the UP named Cronkite, then twenty-five, a war correspondent. Throughout the war, Cronkite sought assignments at the vanguard of the action.
(Whitehurst Photos)

Cronkite
(right)
, ready for flight, with the crew of a B-26 bomber at an air base in England on February 9, 1944. Cronkite was then preparing to join another crew on a mission to destroy a German V-1 rocket base in France.
With Cronkite, from left to right:
Ceibert C. Bragg (flight engineer), Enrique Zepeda (tail gunner), Arthur W. Brand (radio operator), Norman M. Rosner (bombardier), and Jack W. Nye (pilot).
(Whitehurst Photos)

Cronkite
(left)
with fellow United Press correspondents during the Nuremberg Trials.
(Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)

Poster depicting CBS television newscasters, circa 1950–1959. This picture, drawn by Joe Kaufman over the caption, “America’s Most Celebrated Reporters,” shows Cronkite in a white shirt at the lower left.
(Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)