NEW YORK, May 16 (UPI) -- The professional and the personal sides of news anchor Walter Cronkite will be on display during a CBS primetime celebration of his 90th birthday.
Colleagues, friends and competitors will honor Cronkite Friday, CBS Television Network said Tuesday.
Former CBS co-workers Dan Rather, Don Hewett, Morley Safer and Mike Wallace offer insight into the professionalism of the reporter and anchor who was called "the most trusted man in America."
His live report of President John F. Kennedy's assassination marked "the day that television news as we now know it was born, for all intents and purposes," Rather said. "And Walter Cronkite was a very important part of making it so."
Film director Spike Lee said Cronkite "was one of the few people in power positions" that got behind the civil rights movement.
And lest anyone think Cronkite only lived and breathed journalism, actor-comedian Robin Williams said of his friend, "The best time to be with Walter is when he ... was with (his late wife) Betsy" because after a cocktail or two "they both get kind of wonderfully salty and funny."
