I met Walter Cronkite as a young Airman First Class who’d been assigned as a public affairs liaison to the CBS team during the Apollo 17 launch operations in December 1972. There was, as I recall, some kind of technician’s strike going on, and as a consequence CBS management and editorial personnel were working the launch.

Alone among the CBS team, Cronkite treated me with the kind of respect you’d expect from a relic of the Ernie Pile generation of journalists. Without exception, the young “talent” who now undoubtedly constitute the network’s leadership went out of their way to be rude, insulting and condescending. To me he was a class act I’ll never forget, notwithstanding his politics were or how he influenced network news.