Getting to know you

Walter Cronkite. I loved being in a place named after him. He is the icon for broadcast journalism. I was lucky enough to meet him and to listen to him speak at the open forum before the Tate Lecture Series at SMU in the early 2000s.

Cronkite came to SMU to talk about what many didn't know was one of his passions: Space. At the open forum, however, he told stories that went back to his beginnings as a journalist. He was in London as a reporter. He was new and inexperienced and he was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the journalists who would fly in gliders when the Allies invaded Germany. He didn't considered himself lucky and said he would have loved to have declined the honor but didn't want to be considered cowardly.

He told of thinking gliders would be silent and they were far quieter than a fighter pilot. But from inside the glider, he said it was like being inside of a bass drum and that those in the gliders were partially deafened by the flight. Worse, these planes weren't going to land in an airport. Instead, they were to crash land into farmers' fields.

In that crash landing, he and everyone else was thrown around and their helmets ended up separated from their wearers. After crawling out of the glider, Cronkite grabbed a helmet and started crawling although he didn't know which way to go. After a short distance, a soldier tapped him on his leg and asked him if he was sure he knew where he was going. It turned out that Cronkite had a lieutenant's helmet on and there were soldiers following him. He said it was the only time he lead men into combat.

Judy Babb
West Mesquite High School
Mesquite, Texas