REMEMBERING CRONKITE

In the 1960s, I worked for CBS in New York at WCBS-TV, their flagship station on 52nd Street and Madison Avenue in the Look building. We were across the street from the CBS headquarters at 485 Madison Ave. and I was a research writer for the sales department. Every once in awhile my boss would have something that had to be delivered to headquarters across street and I was his messenger boy. One time I had to deliver this envelope and I ran across the street and got on the elevator and there was Walter Cronkie. We went down together and when we got to the lobby, I jumped out and went to the front door on the street and held the door open for Mr. Cronkite. He smiled and walked out. A couple of days later I had to deliver another envelope for my boss and went across the street, took the elevator up and delivered then envelope. Then I got back on the elevator and to my surprise, there again was Mr. Cronkite. We rode down to the main floor again and Mr. Cronkite got out first and walked to the doors to the street, opened the main door, stepped back and held it open for me. I nearly fainted but I shouldn’t have been so surprised because that’s the kind of person he was.

I used to tell my friends in New York that Walter Cronkite was my neighbor. Well, in a way he was, because he had his four-story townhouse on E. 84th St. and his backyard butted up to my apartment building. We had an apartment on the eighth floor and I could look down on his backyard.

BIPARTISAN DISASTER

Jessica Lyons did a credible job of reducing a decades-in-the-making economic fiasco into an informative summary (“Busted – California’s budget crisis from hell,’’ July 15-22).

However, more investigation should have been devoted to exposing HOW our elected Democrats and Republicans created this deficit. A piece in the Los Angeles Times lists some of the burdens California taxpayers should shoulder (either directly or indirectly), because of bad government policy toward illegal aliens.

I am not blaming illegal aliens as the sole source of our economic woes. Rather, I offer this as but one important example of how our state must address and change bad policies and/or laws to revive and prosper our economy.

The notion that you can just “raise taxes’’and solve all your economic woes is rubbish.