But there I was in the days after the news, cruising the old clips on Youtube, and finding myself terribly moved. Probably just that old passage of time thing, I guess. But look: there I am in 1965, at my aunt’s house in Potter county, Pennsylvania, and there’s my cousin Dave, about to get drafted, arguing with his dad about serving in Vietnam (he eventually got C.O. status); there’s my cousin Peg playing the guitar and singing, with her long hair hanging down. A few years later I was given that guitar, a Stella. And she also gave me a bunch of P,P, & M 45 singles: Blowin in the Wind; Puff; The Lily of the West, and so on. Years later, that first P, P & M record was the first record I ever bought. I remember it had Lemon Tree on it, and This Train is Bound for Glory. There was something on the liner notes of the record (remember “liner notes?”) about how “maybe innocence is coming back!”

What can I tell you– among the many things I knew back then was that I wanted to be someone like this Mary some day, as idiotic a dream as that seemed. I know 1000s of women, of course, many of them trans, but I am the only person I know who, from the earliest age, dreamed of being a beatnik. When I went through transition, I really did have to pass through the “60s hippie” stage of my fashion and deportment, followed by the “70s hippie” stage, followed by..etc. I think scientists call this process “Ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.”

In 1987, I drove from Baltimore to Nova Scotia with a heavy heart, trying, as I used to put it, to “solve the ‘being alive’ problem.” I had a crappy old version of the Warlocks singing “In the Early Morning Rain” on the tape deck, which I listened to, all haunted. “I’m a long way from home, and I miss my loved one so. In the early morning rain, with no place to go…”

Anyhow: here we are, 2009. I’m the one who plays coal mining songs, and protest tunes, on my Oscar Schmidt autoharp now, and I’ve got that long straight hair, right out of 1965. You see this video of young Mary Travers? I look like that now, except, you know, deformed and old. But you could do worse, than to want to spend your life singing songs, and fighting injustice.

Remind me again: What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?

And the space program, of course, which I was a huge fan of; Cronkite spoke of the way that, in spite of how much of the 60s made us downcast, that the mercury and gemini and apollo programs made us “upcast:” that each of us cast our eyes upward to the moon, and how that gave us hope.

But there’s also the memories of listening to Walter when nothin’ special was going on. That’s what I miss, and have missed, over the years– having, as they say on LOST, “a constant.” You’d think I’d be the last person in the world to lament the way so many things change, but it’s hard losing our constants, as if the stars themselves began to wander unpredictably across the sky.

By 1979 I was a senior at Wesleyan, and the hostage crisis in Iran dominated the news. I was the editor of the college newspaper, and lived in a co-ed frat, a huge old brick building with giant white columns. After dinner each night, i’d go into a small study, and there watch the CBS news. Walter was getting old by then, but even there, far from home, struggling with gender, afraid each day i was going to mess up at college, mess up with my life, I’d sit and watch.

And more often than not, i’d fall asleep in front of the TV, just as my father used to do during the endless reports of casualties and loss in Vietnam.

That frat was occupied by the first wave of punk rockers, some of whom were my friends, and they always wanted to watch Wheel of Fortune–or something– instead of the news. Since i was so self-important, I always prevailed. Until i fell asleep. Then, at the end of the news, I’d wake up, and look around.

Surrounding me on all sides were punkers in leather, with studs and mohawks. Watching Wheel of Fortune. Each night, they waited for me to fall asleep, and then they’d change the channel.

This has got to be one of the oddest Cronkite memories (my German mother always liked to remind us that ‘cronkheit’ means ‘sickness.’) But it’s the one I have that feels closest to my heart.

When Armstrong first stepped onto the moon, the amazing thing is that Cronkheit, after all those years, lost the ability to speak. He just sat there shaking his head, amazed. I’ve had that feeling, now and again, during my life, when miracles have occured– and sometimes when nothing was happening at all, except life rolling along. A lot of those times, Cronkheit was there.

Thanks, Grampa. I’ll miss you.