'Cronkite' Grasps The Admired and The Avuncular

Actor George Clooney is among those who appear in a tribute to Walter Cronkite tonight. (Cbs News)

Some reporters cover City Hall, some cover the waterfront. Walter Cronkite covered the universe. To Americans of the first TV generations, however, he's revered not just as a reporter, or even as merely the most famous of all network anchors; he's lovable "Uncle Walter," who vicariously guided and nursed us through the trials and triumphs of our lives.

Cronkite has reached the admirable age of 90, an excuse for CBS to toss him another video party, "That's the Way It Is: Celebrating Cronkite at 90," tonight at 8. The hour-long special features encomiums from celebrities who have known Cronkite personally or via the connecting tube of television -- a gathering that proves nothing if not eclectic: Bill Clinton and Robin Williams, Diane Sawyer and George Clooney, Mike Wallace and Spike Lee, and Mickey Hart, drummer for the Grateful Dead.

Hart says he has known Cronkite for years and once invited the old boy backstage at a Dead concert, where Cronkite met the other members of the band. Many years earlier, we learn later, Cronkite had taken his two teenage daughters backstage to meet the Beatles when they made their American performing debut on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

Such memories of Cronkite's, captured in an interview (he doesn't look a day over 85), are interwoven with biographical tidbits, historical footage and reminiscence from the admirers -- among them such collegial competitors as Brian Williams, current anchor of "NBC Nightly News," and current or previous ABC news stars Ted Koppel, Barbara Walters and Charles Gibson, now anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight." Though deservedly first in the ratings these days, as was Cronkite in his, Gibson could hardly be said to exert the national influence that Cronkite did.

With TV's spectrum and audience now radically fragmented, it's highly unlikely any individual broadcaster will ever achieve such impact.

Katie Couric, who of course occupies Cronkite's old anchor chair, makes a few comments and is seen at one point kneeling at Cronkite's knee, as if she were the first woman to integrate the Knights of the Round Table, with King Walter presiding. Less expected are appearances by Dan Rather, who in 1981 succeeded Cronkite as anchor and who proved explosively controversial in the role.

Cronkite and Rather are not pals -- Cronkite unfortunately made a few disparaging remarks about his successor over the years -- and Rather's departure from CBS News after 40 years there was not an amicable separation. Under such circumstances, Rather seems a good sport -- and, as always, the reliable team player -- for showing up. His name, incidentally, is omitted from promotional materials related to the show.

Maybe he will be among those on hand should CBS ever air a special called "Celebrating Cronkite at 100."

Cronkite distinguished himself as a reporter for CBS Radio during World War II. Against the advice of colleagues, he decided to take a whirl at television when it came along, and materialized in a major way as anchor for CBS coverage of the 1952 Republican and Democratic national conventions. He did not take the nation by storm; CBS was clobbered in the ratings during the '50s by NBC's Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, both seen briefly in a clip.

The real reign of Walter began in the '60s, when he took over anchorship of the "Evening News" (then only 15 minutes long) and eventually ascended to the position of "most trusted man in America." He would prove to be the right man for his time, a guiding light -- a comfort as well as a communicator -- through a wrenching decade.

A now-iconic clip of Cronkite telling the nation that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated is played twice on the program. It's still moving: Cronkite's voice breaking as he relays the news ("from Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official . . . "). In fact, Cronkite breaks up again as he looks back on that harrowing weekend in which we were electronically united to mourn a president and, it seems now, the death of our own innocence. Or perhaps the first in a series of those.

Wiping his eyes, Cronkite forces a smile and says apologetically, "Anchormen shouldn't cry." It's hell growing old, but it's good to be of sufficient vintage to remember having witnessed this when it happened. Those too young will never really understand.