Bridge Views: Newsmen of Days Gone By

“Good evening, I’m Roger Grimsby; here now the news” were the words that ushered every family in my neighborhood from the late afternoon 4:30 movie into the evening news. 

Realizing my children are saturated with information yet immune to the ritual of the evening news, I decided to turn on the Channel 7 news recently. There were clips of reality stars caught on tape, famous people behaving badly, and only the most salacious stories being exposed that I didn’t want my children exposed to. 

I switched to Channel 2; then to Channel 4. I felt like my TV was stuck on the “Entertainment Tonight” channel, not only because of the subject matter that was passing for breaking news, but because I was being spoon-fed this information by beautiful people who spoke flatly to me from behind the scratched screen of my old “fat” screen T.V.

One channel I landed on had a newscaster whose name was completely unpronounceable. I had an urge to shout, “Pat, I’d like to buy a vowel please.”  

I can’t help it; I grew up being fed news by men who more closely resembled my cranky uncles who drank too much at the VFW in Fort Lee than Robert Redford at Sundance. I mean, who better to deliver bad news to the tri-state area in the 70s than a man with the last name “Grimsby?” 

There was no better anchor duo than Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel; the Felix and Oscar of network news. 

Whereas I celebrated the grimness of Grimsby, my father knelt at the altar of Cronkite. Personally, I found his eyebrows a little too unruly. Perhaps it would have irked me less if I knew that someday our paths would cross. 

On my very first business trip to Philadelphia in 1987 the hotel erred in my reservation and graciously upgraded me to a suite that was adjacent to Walter Cronkite’s. He was there to cover the 200th anniversary of the Constitution, and I was attending a conference called “Managing Lawyers,” an oxymoron if there ever was one.  When I discovered our suites were mates, I became obsessed with meeting him. How could I not? I lingered, I dawdled, I aimlessly walked the hall—all to no avail. However, late at night, I could hear him shuffling around his room.  

One morning while on my way to the conference, I noticed on the floor outside the door to Walter’s room was a room service tray littered with the remnants of his breakfast. Of course I had to stoop to see what the great Zeus of news fed himself. 

The marmaladed remains of whole wheat toast crusts; a bloated English Breakfast teabag drooling and dribbling all over the crumpled white linen napkin; a glass filmed with the pulp strings of freshly squeezed orange juice. 

As I knelt burrowing through his breakfast pile like a dog digging a bone, the door to his room opened without warning. There, before my downcast eyes stood his mighty vein-webbed feet shoved inside meticulous brown leather slippers. Slowly, I turned my gaze upwards greeting the military creases of his powder blue flannel pajama pants that were peeking from beneath the hem of a richly textured velour navy blue robe. Finally, my eyes reached the summit of the great man’s face. 

He smiled; at least I think he smiled; it could have been a sequestered belch. Then his great hand, the hand that had removed the black-framed glasses from his eyes prior to announcing the death of President Kennedy; the hand that had held the papers containing the number of dead soldiers that he read to America each night during the Vietnam War; the hand that shook the hands of Presidents, kings and world leaders; that famous large and looming hand now reached out to me … with a plate of half-eaten scrambled eggs and the hollowed carcass of a pink grapefruit. 

“Here, take this,” he ordered. “Oh, and get rid of that tray.”

Then the door closed upon the great man, and I did what any 22-year-old caught going through an icon’s breakfast tray would do. I took the tray to the hotel kitchen wondering if Roger Grimsby liked his juice with pulp, and pocketed the two dollar tip Walter had left on the tray.