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Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. (born November 4, 1916) is a retired American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–81). During the heyday of CBS News in the 1970s and 1980s he was often cited in viewer opinion polls as "the most trusted man in America," because of his professional experience and kindly demeanor. Cronkite was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri, the son of Helen Lena (née Fritsche) and Dr. Walter Leland Cronkite, a dentist. He has remote Dutch ancestry on his father`s side, the family surname originally being Krankheyt.

Cronkite lived in Kansas City, Missouri until he was ten, when his family moved to Houston, Texas. He attended junior high school at Lanier Junior High School (now Lanier Middle School) and high school at San Jacinto High School. He was a member of the Boy Scouts. He attended college at The University of Texas at Austin, where he worked on The Daily Texan, and became a member of the Nu chapter of the Chi Phi Fraternity. He also was a member of the Houston chapter of DeMolay, a Masonic fraternal organization for boys.

In 1950, Cronkite joined CBS News in its young and growing television division, recruited by Edward R. Murrow, who had previously tried to hire Cronkite from UP during the war. Cronkite began working at WTOP-TV, the CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C.. On July 7, 1952, the term "anchor" was coined to describe Cronkite`s role at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, which marked the first nationally-televised convention coverage. Cronkite anchored the network`s coverage of the 1952 presidential election as well as later conventions, until in 1964, he was temporarily replaced by the team of Robert Trout and Roger Mudd. This proved to be a mistake, and Cronkite was returned to the anchor chair for future political conventions. Cronkite announced that he intended to retire from the CBS Evening News on February 14, 1980; at the time, CBS had a policy in place that called for mandatory retirement by age 65. Cronkite was married for nearly sixty-five years to Betsy Maxwell Cronkite, whom he married on March 30, 1940. They remained together until her death on March 16, 2005. They have three children: Nancy Cronkite, Kathy Cronkite, and Walter (Chip) Cronkite III (who is married to actress Deborah Rush).

Walter Cronkite died at his home in New York City, New York, at the age of 92 on July 17, 2009 of complications from cerebrovascular disease. CBS news interrupted prime time programming to show an obituary.

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