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Dan Shelley, Director, Digital Media, WCBS-TV & wcbstv.com
NEW YORK (CBS) ― There is an office on the second floor of the CBS Broadcast Center, one overlooking West 57th Street on the northern edge of Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, that has a button on the wall next to the desk.

Press that button, and the door, about 15 feet away, automatically closes.

Today, the office is used by a colleague, Bruce Brauer, vice president of creative services for WCBS-TV.

Every time I visit, I ask him to press the button just so I can watch the door close.

Every time I visit, I can't help but wonder how many times Walter Cronkite pressed the button when he occupied that office while serving as anchor and managing editor of 'The CBS Evening News," 1962-1981.

Was that where he agonized over whether to broadcast his personal opinion that stalemate was the only possible outcome of the Vietnam War? Was that where he helped coordinate the network's preeminent broadcast coverage of Watergate? Was that where he lay the groundwork for the amazing 1977 newscast in which, arguably, he broke the logjam that was preventing an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty?

Did he press that button before he called Ed Sullivan to ask for backstage passes for him and his daughters when the Beatles appeared on Sullivan's show?

I don't know. But I do know that to me, that office is hallowed ground. It was an inner sanctum for one of my heroes, someone upon whom I spent many hours relying during my formative years to explain the monumental moments in history that were occurring.

Both Kennedy assassinations, the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Vietnam, the 1968 Democratic National Convention, man landing and walking on the moon, Kent State, the downfall of Nixon, the accidental presidency of Gerald Ford, the born-again administration of Jimmy Carter, Mideast peace -- they, and much more, all happened while "the most trusted man in America" was on duty.

There is another piece of hallowed ground in the Broadcast Center. It exists amid the maze of narrow hallways on the first floor of the building, which was a dairy before William S. Paley's Columbia Broadcasting System, precursor to today's CBS Corp., bought it in the early 1950s.

The CBS Radio News newsroom, with its adjacent soundproof studios, is a modern newsgathering operation with digital audio recording and editing equipment and workspace pods where anchors, editors and writers can work closely with each other. Its pale green cloth-like wall covering spruced up what was mostly a dingy, cigarette smoke-tarnished yellowish paint when the facility was remodeled several years ago.

Except for one small but amazing area.

On the north wall of the CBS Radio News newsroom is a place that was not replaced by the pale green cloth-like covering.

It is a Plexiglas-protected portion of a world map, framed by wood, showing Southeast Asia -- South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and nearby areas.

It is a Plexiglas-protected portion of the world map that served as a backdrop behind Walter Cronkite's anchor desk during the years he was at the helm for "The CBS Evening News."

I consider it a shrine not only to the place where a man hired by Edward R. Murrow, reluctantly, at first, to join CBS News anchored the "Evening News" for so many years. It also notes the place where Cronkite choked back emotion when he told us that John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been struck down by an assassin's bullet on that fateful fall day.

It was the place where, during a 1973 "Evening News" broadcast, Cronkite was on the telephone as he returned from a commercial. He held up a finger to motion viewers to stand by, asked a few questions, jotted down a few notes, hung up and then was the first to inform the world that former Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson had just died.

It was the place where on hundreds of occasions Cronkite tossed to an "On the Road" feature that had been filed by colleague Charles Kuralt, whose office was next door to his on the second floor of the Broadcast Center, overlooking West 57th Street.

And it was the place where, on a late winter day more than 28 years ago, Walter Cronkite signed off the "Evening News" for the final time, forced to leave by CBS's policy requiring retirement at age 65.

"This is my last broadcast as the anchorman of The CBS Evening News; for me, it's a moment for which I long have planned, but which, nevertheless, comes with some sadness. For almost two decades, after all, we've been meeting like this in the evenings, and I'll miss that. But those who have made anything of this departure, I'm afraid have made too much. This is but a transition, a passing of the baton. A great broadcaster and gentleman, Doug Edwards, preceded me in this job, and another, Dan Rather, will follow. And anyway, the person who sits here is but the most conspicuous member of a superb team of journalists; writers, reporters, editors, producers, and none of that will change…. Old anchormen, you see, don't fade away; they just keep coming back for more. And that's the way it is: Friday, March 6, 1981. I'll be away on assignment, and Dan Rather will be sitting in here for the next few years. Good night."

There are many other vestiges of Walter Cronkite's legacy in this storied old building, including the studio where he grinned and rubbed his hands together like an overjoyed child when man landed on the moon. There are also the people working in the Broadcast Center who were here during the Cronkite era – CBS no longer requires employees to retire at age 65.

Those folks no doubt have memories and anecdotes that would paint a much more complete picture of the man and how his legacy was formed. But for them, that button on the wall and that small portion of world map preserved for posterity aren't viewed through the wide-eyed wonderment of someone who once was a child with a hero named "Uncle Walter" and is now so, so awed to work in the very place where his footsteps once trod.

Dan Shelley is Director, Digital Media at WCBS-TV and WCBSTV.com. He is past chair of the Radio-Television News Directors Association and currently an RTNDA director-at-large.

  

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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