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Walter Cronkite eulogized in personal terms at New York funeral

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After a week of being lauded as a journalistic icon, Walter Cronkite was remembered Thursday in more personal terms: as an exuberant sailor and a caring friend who was not afraid to show emotion.

Cronkite’s friends and family shared their memories of the late CBS newsman at a funeral service at New York’s St. Bartholomew’s Church that was focused less on the anchor’s pioneering career and more on his high-spirited nature.

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Not only was he one of God’s “great witnesses,” said the Rev. William McD. Tully, but he was “a mensch, a full human being.”

Cronkite, 92, died July 17 at his home in New York. He will be buried in Kansas City, Mo., next to his wife, Betsy.

Friend Mike Ashford said that whenever people used to ask him what Cronkite was really like, he would reply, “He’s just the way you hope he is.”

The two bonded over their love of the sea, though Ashford noted that sailing with Cronkite “was not for the faint of heart.” As spray pelted the boat and the crew hung over for dear life, Cronkite, “hunched over the helm, would catch my eye, grin and holler, ‘Sensational!’ ” Ashford recalled.

“Walter was more than a crusty old sailor,” he added, remembering the tears the newsman shed when his yellow Labrador retriever died. “He had an antenna sensitive to friends’ pain. He knew the words to restore the fun, chase the worry and make things good again.”

“Good night, old boy,” Ashford concluded. “It’s all been sensational.”

Cronkite’s son, Chip, said the longtime CBS anchor “helped Americans on both side of the political fence understand each other.” But he thanked his father for the familial role he played, such as “saying to Mom as you passed her in the kitchen or the hall, ‘Shall we dance?’ and then taking her for a few turns around the room.’

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The sanctuary of St. Bartholomew’s was packed with bold-faced names from the television industry who gathered to pay their respects to the man who brought gravitas to the the anchor’s chair. Evening news anchors Brian Williams, Charles Gibson and Katie Couric were there, along with Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Diane Sawyer, Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira and a host of television executives.

Longtime friend and CBS colleague Andy Rooney was overcome as he stood up to eulogize Cronkite. “I just feel so terrible about Walter’s death that I can hardly say anything,” Rooney said. “He’s been such a good friend over the years. Please excuse me, I can’t.”

Former CBS News executive Sanford Socolow said Cronkite was “always a wire service reporter in his heart,” living by the adage: “Get it first, but get it right.”

Still, the great anchor had his quirks. Socolow noted that there were “aspects of Walter that would drive anybody crazy,” recalling the time that he decided to ad lib the newscast without a script, a chaotic experiment that lasted two days. And he said Cronkite’s mispronunciation of the word “February” drew so many viewer complaints that they would make him practice saying it for the last week of January, to little avail.

But it was Cronkite the sailor who was invoked the most throughout the service.

“In yachting terms, Walter Cronkite would be called a ‘one-off,’ ” said friend and fellow sailor Bill Harbach. “He was absolutely an original.”

A few days before Cronkite died, Harbach said he sat by his friend’s bedside and read him the poem “Sea-Fever” by John Masefield, changing it from the first person to the second person as a farewell to his old friend. He recited the lines in the stillness of the church:

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You must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky
And all you ask is for a tall ship and a star to steer her by
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s sing and the white sail’s shaking,
And the grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.”

-- Matea Gold

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