Death of a Legend

The world has lost another legend. Even more so than the king of pop, Walter Cronkite has defined for us Americans a large part of our culture.

I remember when I was in high school I was somewhat interested in Journalism. I'm not going to go into a long story about how Walter Cronkite was an inspiration for me and my interest in that specific area, because that would be a lie, but as I saw the article about his death, I was rather saddened by the news, yes, even more so than the death of Michael Jackson.

I remember the summer between my Sophomore and Junior year at NYU. The first summer session I was taking Sight and Sound Documentary with Barbara Malmet. This was her first teaching the class and I was working on the previously mentioned "Boheimobot" while taking this class. However, that's irrelevant. This class is significant because for my final project I decided to do a documentary on Ham Radio, a project that I still need to do titles for so I can submit to festivals.

At any rate, one interview I had was with a friend of a friend Steve Mendelson. Steve, in attition to being very articulate, is a Ham Radio entusiast, works for ABC and in his free time is the frequency coordinator for the NY Jets. I recall during my interview of him he pointed out to me many names of famous people who were also Ham Radio enthusiasts, Walter Cronkite being one of them.

I think about all this because I've come to realize that through Ham Radio I've become part of a society hidden from most of the general public's view, a society shared by Walter Cronkite himself, and I feel sad because I've never even gotten to broadcast a single sound because I don't have the equipment. I wish I had the chance to talk to him over the radio waves, but I guess I'll never be able to.

So here's to you KB2GSD, you will be missed.

Best 73's

KC2SCG out.