HAVRE DE GRACE -- Walter Cronkite's been back in the spotlight recently, being treated with such veneration that those too young to remember him must be wondering exactly who this bristly old codger with the astonishing mustache might be.
It's not enough to tell them that he was once considered ''the most trusted man in America.'' In 1996, such a concept seems as old-fashioned as chastity. Today, if someone were to be accorded that unlikely title, it wouldn't take 20 minutes before a victim would be on the news, flanked by lawyers, agents and a recovered-memory shrink, tearfully explaining how Mr. Trustworthy had criminally abused her when they were in middle school together.
What's more relevant, perhaps, is the way Mr. Cronkite's name and face became parts of the popular culture of his day. This had less to do with trust than it did with ubiquity. A much higher percentage of people in that era watched network news than do today, and the majority of them watched CBS and Uncle Walter.
In Swedish, I read somewhere recently, the name for a television anchorman is a ''cronkiter.'' And in at least some American households, there was a time when, if somebody sneezed, somebody else would exclaim ''Cronkite!'' Other people have achieved that kind of celebrity stature since, of course, but none of them have been in the news business.
Among those of Mr. Cronkite's qualities which most contributed to his success, and which distinguished him from many others in his field, were that he had led a real life before he became a household word, and that he tried hard, with some success, to live a normal person's life afterward.
He was a brave United Press correspondent in World War II, with no neutralist illusions about whose side he was on; in a bomber over Germany he was given a machine gun to man, and when the chance came to fire it at enemy fighters, he didn't waste it.
After the war, on his slow climb to the top of the television mountain, there were plenty of demeaning pauses at lower altitudes. For example, one of his early partners on CBS was a puppet named Charlemane with whom he was expected to crack jokes. Later, on ''You Are There,'' he had to conduct preposterous ''interviews'' with historical figures -- such as Achilles before the battle of Troy.
But he was an honest reporter, with the old-fashioned belief that journalists should not be advocates or celebrities but should cherish the truth and value facts above fortune. He hasn't shed that quaint outlook. In his new memoir, ''A Reporter's Life,'' he sounds fairly somber about what's become of his old trade.
