“Is that Walter Cronkite?” I asked.
“Yes, it is,” answered Donald Davidson, an auto racing historian with an encyclopedic memory.
We were watching old racing movies — this was many years ago — and I
spied Mr. Cronkite in a segment of an old Indianapolis 500 race.
“Cronkite came to the Indianapolis 500 many times,” recalled Mr.
Davidson, who is now historian for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s
museum. “Usually he was the guest of team owner Lindsey Hopkins. Not
many people know that in the 1950s Cronkite was an aspiring race driver
and was apparently quite talented.”
Indeed, the author Brock Yates remembered Mr. Cronkite, who died Friday at the age of 92,
was a regular at racetracks like Bridgehampton on Long Island, as early
as 1949. Mr. Cronkite would come with his friends, like the “Today”
show host Dave Garroway and the actor Jackie Cooper, who was racing his
own Austin-Healey, Mr. Yates wrote in his book, “Against Death and Time.”
Mr. Cronkite was also a regular at Manhattan eateries that were
popular with racers, like Le Chanteclair, which was owned by the former
Formula One racer Rene Dreyfus, and Sardi’s. And Mr. Cronkite was an early member of the Madison Avenue Sports Car and Chowder Society, a group of automotive journalists, sports-car enthusiasts and racers.
Records are sketchy from this era, for those sleuthing to learn how
many races Mr. Cronkite might have started, how he finished or what he
drove. But there are bits and pieces. He apparently raced not only at Bridgehampton Raceway, which has since closed, but also at Lime Rock in Connecticut and Watkins Glen in upstate New York.
Mr. Cronkite drove several times in the Little Le Mans endurance races in the late 1950s at Lime Rock, in a Volvo PV444. He once finished as high as third over all; he took home the winner’s trophy, however, for coming in first in his class.
“He drove in the 12 Hours of Sebring once, 1959, I believe, and he
filed radio reports for CBS between shifts,” Mr. Davidson said Monday
in an e-mail exchange.
Indeed, Mr. Cronkite is listed as driving a Lancia Appia Zagato
with two other drivers in the 1959 Sebring classic; they finished fifth
in their class and 40th over all (a record 74 percent of starters
finished that year). This was a tough crowd in which to hold one’s own;
others in the field included the overall winners Phil Hill, Dan Gurney,
Olivier Gendebien and Chuck Daigh, along with the Formula One legends
Bruce McLaren and Stirling Moss.
Mr. Cronkite was well acquainted with Mr. Moss and interviewed him
on several occasions. Mr. Cronkite reported for CBS on a number of
races in which Mr. Moss competed, including the Monaco Grand Prix (seen
in the video above, via the Lawrence Journal-World).
Mr. Cronkite was an avid sports reporter in those days, and when the
Olympics were televised for the first time, in 1960 from Squaw Valley,
Calif., Mr. Cronkite was the on-site anchor for CBS’s coverage.
But Mr. Cronkite’s racing career fell victim to his aspirations at CBS.
“His bosses told him that if he wanted to go anyplace in the news
business, he had to give up racing,” Mr. Davidson noted. “It was just
too dangerous –- and it was in those days –- and they didn’t want to
put anyone on the air who might be maimed or killed at any given
moment.”
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