Walter Said, "Wait a Minute"

Like many of you I grew up with Walter Cronkite. Much is being said about how we "trusted" him. I remember Betsy escorting Betty Feezor around the day she spoke at one of my churches. Betty was famous. She was a local version of Martha Stewart with her TV program on cooking and crafts.

Betsy commented to Betty on how people would come up to her like "she knew them personally." Betty Feezor's response was, "They think that because they have me in their houses through the medium of TV and know me that I know them." This was in part true but it was also because Betty Feezor oozed a kind of relational feeling by the way she talked about recipes and ways to make things.

Walter Cronkite made us feel like we could trust him. One clip I saw the other night was when the camera went live one evening but Walter was on the phone trying to confirm if Lyndon Johnson, the former President, was in fact dead. He would not go "live" with this important news unless he was certain. So "Uncle Walter" held up his finger to the camera and to all who were watching and said, "Wait a minute." We all waited. Then he gave us the news.

My I wish the talking heads would learn to wait a minute. Now we hear so much opinion about the news that it is hard to find the news in it all. Everyone has a soapbox and the boxes seem to be getting higher and the opinion gets more polarizing.

Walter knew how to wait and ponder. That is one reason we trusted him.

Our "faith story" calls upon us to "wait" in order to "know." We are trapped in a swamp of accessibility and instant knowledge. Fast can be good but it can be dangerous in a world that is complex and cannot be captured by sound bites.

Walter Cronkite spoke at my graduation from Duke. I do not remember exactly what he said. I remember him. I remember that some graduates that day did not like what he said. He was not there that day to give the news but to talk about his view of what was happening. I remember he said something like, "He loved America and that is why he was asking questions of her..."

Ah, Walter thank you for the wisdom that asks us to "wait..."
jody jseymour@davidsonumc.org