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Walter Cronkite came to be known to millions of Americans at the height of his television news career -- a 1973 gallup poll even backed that up.

Long before 24-hour cable news and the Internet, at a time when you could count on one hand the number of television stations anyone could get, Cronkite was often the person Americans turned to in good times and bad.

"He was someone who not only brought the news, but you thought he was part of the family, he defined the whole idea of being anchor so much that way," said Ron Simon of the Paley Center For Media.

Many Americans experienced the history of much of the second half of the 20th century through Walter Cronkite. He was the face of CBS News in the 60s, one of our nation's most tumultuous decades. He was there when President Kennedy was assassinated.

Cronkite was so connected with his beloved space program that years later, when John Glenn was honored in New York for returning to space, the keynote speaker was Walter Cronkite.

But perhaps nothing exemplified Cronkite's influence as his reports from Vietnam in 1968. He went there a hawk but came back reporting that the war was unwinable.

President Lyndon Johnson was quoted as saying, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

Cronkite already had a lifetime of journalistic experiences by the time he became the anchorman for the CBS evening news in 1962.

Raised in Kansas City and Houston, he covered World War II for the United Press wire service, joining the U.S. Air Force for bombing raids over Germany and covering the Battle of the Bulge.

After the war, he reported from the Nuremberg Nazi Trials, and was stationed in Moscow for two years.

In 1950, he came to the place that would be his professional home for the rest of his life -- CBS News.

Two years later, the Democratic and Republican conventions were shown on television for the first time. Cronkite led the network's on-air news coverage. His producer said he was like the anchor leg in a relay race, and the term "anchorman" was born.

"It's a very difficult thing to be a Walter Cronkite, it takes years of training, he was both a newspaper man and a television personality before he became the anchor that we know as Walter Cronkite, and unfortunately people don't have as much training now like Walter Cronkite did," said Simon.

Cronkite retired from the evening news in 1981, but continued to call New York home.

In retirement, he was often seen out on the town at social and charitable functions. He remained active, occasionally working for CBS, CNN, the Discovery Channel and National Public Radio.

The 21st century has brought us a world where people can get their news from hundreds of sources, at any time, anywhere. The broadcast world was smaller when Walter Cronkite was on the air, when he brought a style, a demeanor, perhaps an undefinable quality that made him "the most trusted man in America."