How Walter Cronkite taught me to read-pt.1

In 1st grade, most kids could care less about anything outside of the sandbox. 'News' and 'Current Events' weren't exactly the buzz words found in our weekly spelling lists. With the passing of Walter Cronkite this week, I found myself taken back to the time in my life when I first developed my passion for using my voice and communicating with the spoken word. I may not have fully realized it at the time, but Cronkite's persona and ability to engage the viewer/listener actually helped me to think 'out of the (sand)box' at a young age.

As a kid, I remember seeing the man on the TV who reminded me of Captain Kangaroo. He wore thick, black-framed glasses and sounded a bit like the walrus on one of my favorite cartoons. At age 7, I didn't understand half of what he was talking about, but by the way he said it, and the way he had my parents seemingly hanging on every word, I knew that whatever he was saying must have been important.

I learned that this deep-voiced and serious looking man was informing us of the events of the day. He had such a way of telling his stories that I felt like he was talking directly to my family in our living room. I thought it was so cool that this one guy could be telling me just what was happening in the world. No wonder he seemed to be so important.

Later that year, I had to get glasses. Traumatic, yes. But, when the eye doctor showed me the case of frames from which I could choose, I knew exactly what I was looking for.

The next day at school, I strolled into the classroom donning my thick, black-framed specs that looked just like the ones that the important guy on TV wore every night when he peered into my living room to tell me what I needed to know. I thought I was now the most important person in the 1st grade. Unfortunately, my self-prescribed importance was lost on a class who obviously didn't know who the important guy on TV was, or perhaps didn't understand the importance of what he had to say each and every night. No, I quickly learned that unless you know how to read and communicate something of importance, you are just a thick, black-framed, glasses-wearing dork in the 1st grade.

(Tomorrow, pt. 2)