Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley Page A

train, and a gold locket that both her grandmother and mother had worn on their wedding days. Leaving at the rising of a pale blue prairie dawn, the Cronkites went on a whirlwind auto honeymoon to Houston, Galveston, El Paso, and Mexico, before heading back to western Missouri. Cronkite, procuring journalism contacts and future sources along the way, visited upstart United Press cubbyhole offices (the 1940s equivalent of stopping by Pony Express stations) far and wide. Thanks to his insatiable need for human company, the honeymoon became what Hemingway called a “movable feast.” Betsy learned during all those road trip hours that despite any inner sadness, her new husband never stopped laughing. He had an infectious laugh. It wasn’t coarse or hearty or even especially loud. It just had an amazing ain’t life somethin’ ring to it. “We were traveling with a little group,” Cronkite fondly recalled of the honeymoon. “I’d keep inviting people to come along.”
    Once back in springtime Kansas City, the Cronkites moved into a Locust Street apartment in the southwest part of town. The quarters comprised four rooms—living area, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. There was a little alcove where Cronkite kept his World Book Encyclopedia set. The floors were inlaid wood, the wall panels rich oak; there were forest green silk tapestries and a pedestal wide enough to hold a huge Victrola radio. They became great friends with another young journalist, Frank Barhydt, who was a community writer-director and later a publicity director for WHB Broadcasting Co. in Kansas City, Missouri. Together, the Cronkites and Barhydt tried to make a movie in their spare time just for fun.
    Betsy Cronkite, a stately figure for all her down-to-earth ways, continued her newspaper work as women’s page editor of the Kansas City Journal-Post . Blessed with a wicked sense of droll humor, always dressed to the nines, she was beloved by colleagues at the paper. Her journalistic specialty was human interest stories of the sentimental variety. One of her duties was to continue writing an advice column for the lovelorn, “Ask Hope Hudson.” Because there was real pain behind the letters she answered weekly, Betsy took even the most frivolous ones seriously. Betsy, it turned out, was a better natural writer than her husband, with a loose, breezy, and distinctive style all her own. Nevertheless, she downplayed her career in later years. “My journalism was really trivial,” she said in a 1979 interview. “I just worked for the money.”
    Cronkite’s United Press bureau was on the top floor of the same factory building occupied by the Journal-Post , so when work permitted, she and Walter sneaked off for a quick whisper, hug, or fool-around. Cronkite determined that his beloved Kansas City was the ideal town in which to raise a family. But those gathering CBS News broadcasts from Europe made him want to get in on the burgeoning war action. If radio news became too popular, even newspapers would become passé. A few of Cronkite’s bosses in Kansas City advocated for UP to boycott any news delivery to radio companies. A press-versus-radio war had kindled, but Cronkite, hungry for income, declined to choose sides. He wanted paychecks from both print and radio companies. With CBS Radio News delivering real-time transmissions from overseas, Cronkite, the consumer, was a news junkie. He couldn’t get enough international reportage. No longer did he care when the American Newspaper Publishers Association (ANPA) scoffed about radio as a fad: he knew it was the future of the communications industry.
    For Cronkite, early May 1940 was the most eye-opening moment of the war thus far—violating the neutrality of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, Nazi Germany unleashed the Luftwaffe fire. The Dutch did their best to thwart this air assault, but the bustling port of Rotterdam was soon reduced to rubble by the German Luftwaffe, and nearly a thousand people