Author Brinkley reports on Cronkite

A prize-winning historian on a quest "to understand America" was the guest speaker Thursday evening at the Idaho Humanities Council's 10th annual Distinguished Humanities Lecture and Dinner at The Coeur d'Alene Resort.

Speaking on the subject of his most recent book, "Cronkite," Douglas Brinkley entertained the audience with an energizing combination of anecdotes, biography and downhome Midwestern humor.

Brinkley started out by humbly admitting that his first professional contact with Cronkite had been a case of mistaken identity where Cronkite assumed he was the son of newscaster David Brinkley and that the two of them had previously gone sailing together in North Carolina.

"I am not related to David Brinkley," Brinkley told his audience, "and I'd like to get that point out of the way right off.

"And I wouldn't want to claim that I actually interviewed Walter Cronkite for this book," Brinkley said. "But I did spend some time in his orbit and it greatly affected my outlook."

Brinkley, an Ohioan by birth whose childhood dream was to become a second Walter Cronkite, is currently a history professor at Houston's Rice University. His 820-page book, "Cronkite," is an in-depth biography of "the most trusted man in America."

Tracing Cronkite's life back to his birth as the son of an alcoholic dentist, Brinkley painted a sometimes sad picture of the man who had "always wanted to be liked by everyone."

During his brief student tenure at the University of Texas, Cronkite worked for the college paper and even scored an interview with Gertrude Stein.

"Before he dropped out," Brinkley said, "he got a job being a horseracing announcer for an illegal bookie joint."

For the man whose mother had been forced to feed him dog food at times during the Great Depression, money was all-important.

Cronkite's 1937 coverage of a school gas explosion that killed 280 children was, according to Brinkley, Cronkite's first big break. Though he had been paid to cover the story as a print journalist, he ended up on CBS radio giving eyewitness reports from the tragedy.

"During World War II, Cronkite became the Ernie Pyle of the air war against the Nazis," Brinkley said. "He was also a lot of fun to be with. He'd drink, tell stories and even formed a band called The Latrines. He always joked that his 'war injury' occurred when he was 'tuliped' by the grateful Dutch during the liberation of Holland."

Following the war, Cronkite was hired by CBS News in Washington, D.C. "He ended up with the single worst job there," Brinkley said. "He ended up in television, which at that time was the loserville of journalism."

According to Brinkley, the rest of Cronkite's career is the stuff of history. A "convention junkie," he covered political conventions from 1952 to 1996; he was famous for his moving coverage of the Kennedy assassination, and when he got a beat that no one else wanted - military aviation - he managed to make outer space riveting. During Vietnam, America got its "living room war" from watching Walter Cronkite. The alcoholic's son had become one of the most powerful men in the nation.

"If Cronkite phoned, you took the call," Brinkley said.

After hearing Brinkley's presentation, it seems impossible that the late newscaster could have a better biographer. Brinkley spoke with warmth, insight, humor and an accurate sense of where Walter Cronkite fit in the history of this country.

An intellectually adventurous soul and a five-time New York Times bestselling author, Brinkley himself has produced World War II histories; compiled unpublished manuscripts of Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson; and written biographical works on Presidents Ford and Carter.

Brinkley's current project is a book on Franklin Delano Roosevelt and conservation.

After that?

"When you do a big biography like I'm doing on FDR, you kind of look to do something different next," he said. "I may be doing a little project with Wynton Marsalis because music is one of my hobbies."

And that's the way it was, October 3rd, 2013.