On the morning of Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, I was in my first-year of graduate school at Stanford. My class in advanced probability theory began at 11 o'clock.
About ten minutes into the class, one of my classmates came running into the class crying, saying "The President's been shot! The President's been shot." She was a cute, red-haired, freckled-face girl who often sat by me. Our professor, Emanuel Parzen, asked her to calm down. Instead, she turned and ran out of class. Professor Parzen then reminded us that it was the weekend of the big Stanford-Cal football game. He said that rumors ran rampant every year on this weekend and then showed us mathematically how unlikely it was that the President had been shot.
After class, some friends and I headed to the Student Union. We saw that the TV lounge was jammed. CBS-TV's Walter Cronkite was talking about what had happened in Dallas. Then he paused.... Hesitantly, Cronkite told us that President Kennedy had died. He removed his eye glasses and wiped tears from his eyes. Like almost every one in America, Cronkite was deeply saddened by the assassination of President Kennedy.
On the following Monday, Professor Parzen openly apologized to our classmate for not believing her when she told us JFK had been shot.

Walter Cronkite will be missed by so many of us. If you are old enough to remember his broadcasts, think of all the news he brought to us over the years. He had a low-key, natural way of delivering the news.
In the late-1960's, I joined a group in Chicago called Businessmen Move Against the War in Viet Nam. I was glad to meet others who shared my opposition to the war. Cronkite, I later learned, shared our views. If you're too young to remember the 1960's, you should know that most Americans supported the Viet Nam war and resented anyone who opposed it.
I am only one among many, many people who are glad that Walter Cronkite was here while we were and did such an amazing job bringing us the news.
Goodbye, Walter! Thank you for enriching our lives....
George Spink
Los Angeles










