Letting down Walter Cronkite

Part two: He was a true anchorman, and a great sailor. Too bad I lost it.

The last missive, https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/and-thats-the-way-it-was-with-walter, recounted my good fortune to meet and sail Vineyard waters aboard the Wyntje with Walter Cronkite, soaking in his remarkable perspectives. But there is one more piece to the tale:

Soon after, Walter invited me on a far more ambitious sail, overnight from Marblehead, Mass., to Bar Harbor, Maine. Again I was there to provide muscle power and company, take the tiller for short spells, ready-about and hard-a-lee. Despite small craft warnings, Walter plotted a course that would take us far from land into an inky night, expressing no concern; hell, if the most trusted man in America was good to go, so was I. We ate a hearty spaghetti dinner with a glass of red wine at the dock and shoved off, hoping to reach Bar Harbor by morning light.

All was well for the first hour as we got our bearings, the Wyntje heading east and north, Polaris visible, winds picking up. Then dinner and swells betrayed me:

Seasickness.

I tried my best to hang in, but it didn’t take long for him to appreciate my situation.

“Seth,” Walter announced, taking the tiller, “perhaps it may console you to know that you are in good company. The magnificent admiral of our United States Navy, Chester Nimitz, who I believe had Cape Cod connections, was known to become violently seasick at the commencement of every one of his many voyages. He would turn his vessel over to his trusted second-in-command until such time as he recovered his sea legs. And then he would resume his rightful place at the helm.

“Unfortunately, I’m afraid we will reach our destination before you have time to make a similar recovery.”

I was unable to let Walter know how much I appreciated his sympathetic historic precedent and commentary, nor how much I regretted punctuating it with sounds of retching over the stern. And his journalistic prediction was accurate; when we landed in Bar Harbor, I crawled ashore to kiss the dirt in gratitude, feeling like I was still tossing on the Atlantic -- in every sense. I wandered until I could return dockside and remain upright, where Walter was sitting on the Wyntje with a book and cup of coffee.

“Sorry, Walter, I left you in the lurch.”

“Nonsense,” he said, looking up long enough to be polite.

I had let down Walter Cronkite. This is not easy to live with, akin to letting down God. And I never had a chance to make it up; of course he never asked me to sail again.

I made my way back to the Cape, musing about how fitting it was for a sailor to be an “anchor,” as in anchorman. He wasn’t “talent,” that cynical word wouldn’t surface until years later. He was a national grapple in hard bottom, aspiring to hold down a tether to what was real, to be tenacious and hook us in place, allow us to take bearings. He was our antidote to vertigo and spin; he held the line taut when the world buffeted and made us sick.

Attributing such authority and importance to a guy on TV sounds ridiculous these days. Then again, had Walter Cronkite still been at the national desk, funneling life into 30-minute nightly slots that became common denominators for America, it never would have become possible to accuse the press of being “the enemies of the people,” or that journalists trying to seek out and explain facts are “fake.”

He didn’t live to offer his perspective on any of that, passing in 2009 at age 92, proof yet again that no one gets out of here alive, not even Walter Cronkite.

As for the Wyntje, more than a decade before he died, Cronkite donated her to a nonprofit that teaches young people teamwork, discipline, and mutual respect, gained by working onboard a beautiful sailing ship.

And that’s the way it was.

NEXT: THE WHALE TALE THAT CIRCLED THE GLOBE — AND WHY I’M SURE IT’S TRUE

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