Walter Cronkite passes

[Kevin Vahey]

My biggest fear that night was not blowing a couple of zoom shots CBS
trusted me with. The other CBS talent in the garage that night was
Bruce Morton and he and Walter bantered on what this meant for
President Johnson.

Bill

I don't think Walter was showing contempt for what Nixon stood for but
it was more it would have been nice to tell us you were dropping by.
Nixon I had met a few times before as he spent a lot of time at WMUR
because he had to win that primary or he was finished and I believe he
wound up with over 70 percent of the vote.

What I took away the most from that night was his genuine concern of
what my generation was feeling and he talked to me like a concerned
uncle no pun intended. I think he was simply being a reporter trying
to find out what we saw was wrong that his generation did not. There
were a million questions I could have asked him but he was doing the
asking. He did joke a couple of times about how WMUR-TV was a little
behind the times but was impressed at what we could do considering we
had nothing to work with.

We were never interrupted once by the customers of The Dog House. Late
nights were usually truckers, Air Force guys from the secret tracking
station in New Boston and other night owls. Most likely everyone was
thinking why on earth would Walter Cronkite be here.

Looking back at history that night in New Hampshire was simply the
start of an insane couple of years in our history as things would
really explode in the coming months.