Walter Cronkite Career Where does Cronkite get his start in  jounalism? He entered broadcasting as a radio announcer for WKY in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. What year did he work at WKY? I don't know. Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? With his name now established, he received a job offer from Edward R. Murrow at CBS News to join the Murrow Boys team of war correspondents, what made his name be noticed before the job offer? In Kansas City, he joined the United Press in 1937. He became one of the top American reporters in World War II, covering battles in North Africa and Europe. Did he accept the job offer? He initially accepted the offer. When he informed his boss Harrison Salisbury, UP countered with a raise of $17.50 per week; Did Cronkite reject the offer after that? Cronkite ultimately accepted the UP offer, a move which angered Murrow and drove a wedge between them that would last for years.
Did the wedge cause any issues in the future?
Did the wedge cause any issues in the future?
He dropped out of college in his junior year, in the fall term of 1935, after starting a series of newspaper reporting jobs covering news and sports. He entered broadcasting as a radio announcer for WKY in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In 1936, he met his future wife, Mary Elizabeth "Betsy" Maxwell, while working as the sports announcer for KCMO (AM) in Kansas City, Missouri. His broadcast name was "Walter Wilcox". He would explain later that radio stations at the time did not want people to use their real names for fear of taking their listeners with them if they left. In Kansas City, he joined the United Press in 1937. He became one of the top American reporters in World War II, covering battles in North Africa and Europe.  With his name now established, he received a job offer from Edward R. Murrow at CBS News to join the Murrow Boys team of war correspondents, relieving Bill Downs as the head of the Moscow bureau. CBS offered Cronkite $125 a week along with "commercial fees" amounting to $25 for almost every time Cronkite reported on air. Up to that point, he had been making $57.50 per week at UP, but he had reservations about broadcasting. He initially accepted the offer. When he informed his boss Harrison Salisbury, UP countered with a raise of $17.50 per week; Hugh Baillie also offered him an extra $20 per week to stay. Cronkite ultimately accepted the UP offer, a move which angered Murrow and drove a wedge between them that would last for years.  Cronkite was on board USS Texas (BB-35) starting in Norfolk, Virginia, through her service off the coast of North Africa as part of Operation Torch, and thence back to the US. On the return trip, Cronkite was flown off Texas in one of her OS2U Kingfisher aircraft when Norfolk was within flying distance. He was granted permission to be flown the rest of the distance to Norfolk so that he could outpace a rival correspondent on USS Massachusetts (BB-59) to return to the US and to issue the first uncensored news reports to published about Operation Torch. Cronkite's experiences aboard Texas launched his career as a war correspondent. Subsequently, he was one of eight journalists selected by the United States Army Air Forces to fly bombing raids over Germany in a B-17 Flying Fortress part of group called the Writing 69th, and during a mission fired a machine gun at a German fighter. He also landed in a glider with the 101st Airborne in Operation Market Garden and covered the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he covered the Nuremberg trials and served as the United Press main reporter in Moscow from 1946 to 1948. CANNOTANSWER
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Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–1981). During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll. Cronkite reported many events from 1937 to 1981, including bombings in World War II; the Nuremberg trials; combat in the Vietnam War; the Dawson's Field hijackings; Watergate; the Iran Hostage Crisis; and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King Jr., and Beatles musician John Lennon. He was also known for his extensive coverage of the U.S. space program, from Project Mercury to the Moon landings to the Space Shuttle. He was the only non-NASA recipient of an Ambassador of Exploration award. Cronkite is known for his departing catchphrase, "And that's the way it is", followed by the date of the broadcast.

Early life and education 
Cronkite was born on November 4, 1916, in Saint Joseph, Missouri, the son of Helen Lena (née Fritsche) and Dr. Walter Leland Cronkite, a dentist.

Cronkite lived in Kansas City, Missouri, until he was ten, when his family moved to Houston, Texas. He attended elementary school at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School (now Baker Montessori School), junior high school at Lanier Junior High School (now Lanier Middle School) in Houston, and high school at San Jacinto High School, where he edited the high school newspaper. He was a member of the Boy Scouts. He attended college at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), entering in the Fall term of 1933, where he worked on the Daily Texan and became a member of the Nu chapter of the Chi Phi Fraternity. He also was a member of the Houston chapter of DeMolay, a Masonic fraternal organization for boys. While attending UT, Cronkite had his first taste of performance, appearing in a play with fellow student Eli Wallach. He dropped out in 1935, not returning for the Fall term, in order to concentrate on journalism.

Career 
He dropped out of college in his junior year, in the fall term of 1935, after starting a series of newspaper reporting jobs covering news and sports. He entered broadcasting as a radio announcer for WKY in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In 1936, he met his future wife, Mary Elizabeth "Betsy" Maxwell, while working as the sports announcer for KCMO (AM) in Kansas City, Missouri. His broadcast name was "Walter Wilcox". He would explain later that radio stations at the time did not want people to use their real names for fear of taking their listeners with them if they left. In Kansas City, he joined the United Press International in 1937.

With his name now established, he received a job offer from Edward R. Murrow at CBS News to join the Murrow Boys team of war correspondents, relieving Bill Downs as the head of the Moscow bureau. CBS offered Cronkite $125 ($2,235 in 2020 money) a week along with "commercial fees" amounting to $25 ($447 in 2020) for almost every time Cronkite reported on air. Up to that point, he had been making $57.50 ($1,027 in 2020) per week at UP, but he had reservations about broadcasting. He initially accepted the offer. When he informed his boss Harrison Salisbury, UP countered with a raise of $17.50 ($312 in 2020) per week; Hugh Baillie also offered him an extra $20 ($357 in 2020) per week to stay. Cronkite ultimately accepted the UP offer, a move which angered Murrow and drove a wedge between them that would last for years.

Cronkite became one of the top American reporters in World War II, covering battles in North Africa and Europe. He was on board  starting in Norfolk, Virginia, through her service off the coast of North Africa as part of Operation Torch, and thence back to the US. On the return trip, Cronkite was flown off Texas in one of her Vought OS2U Kingfisher aircraft when Norfolk was within flying distance. He was granted permission to be flown the rest of the distance to Norfolk so that he could outpace a rival correspondent on  to return to the US and to issue the first uncensored news reports to be published about Operation Torch. Cronkite's experiences aboard Texas launched his career as a war correspondent. Subsequently, he was one of eight journalists selected by the United States Army Air Forces to fly bombing raids over Germany in a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress part of group called The Writing 69th, and during a mission fired a machine gun at a German fighter. He also landed in a glider with the 101st Airborne Division in Operation Market Garden and covered the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he covered the Nuremberg trials and served as the United Press main reporter in Moscow from 1946 to 1948.

Early years at CBS 
In 1950, Cronkite joined CBS News in its young and growing television division, again recruited by Murrow. Cronkite began working at WTOP-TV (now WUSA), the CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C.. He originally served as anchor of the network's 15-minute late-Sunday-evening newscast Up To the Minute, which followed What's My Line? at 11:00 pm ET from 1951 through 1962.

Although it was widely reported that the term "anchor" was coined to describe Cronkite's role at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, marking the first nationally televised convention coverage, other news presenters bore the title before him. Cronkite anchored the network's coverage of the 1952 presidential election as well as later conventions. In 1964 he was temporarily replaced by the team of Robert Trout and Roger Mudd; this proved to be a mistake, and Cronkite returned to the anchor chair for future political conventions.

From 1953 to 1957, Cronkite hosted the CBS program You Are There, which reenacted historical events, using the format of a news report. His famous last line for these programs was: "What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times ... and you were there." In 1971, the show was revived and redesigned to attract an audience of teenagers and young adults, hosted again by Cronkite on Saturday mornings.  In 1957, he began hosting The Twentieth Century (eventually renamed The 20th Century), a documentary series about important historical events of the century composed almost exclusively of newsreel footage and interviews.  A long-running hit, the show was again renamed as The 21st Century in 1967 with Cronkite hosting speculative reporting on the future for another three years. Cronkite also hosted It's News to Me, a game show based on news events.

During the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956 Cronkite hosted the CBS news-discussion series Pick the Winner.

Another of his network assignments was The Morning Show, CBS' short-lived challenge to NBC's Today in 1954. His on-air duties included interviewing guests and chatting with a lion puppet named Charlemane about the news. He considered this discourse with a puppet as "one of the highlights" of the show. He added, "A puppet can render opinions on people and things that a human commentator would not feel free to utter. I was and I am proud of it." Cronkite also angered the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the show's sponsor, by grammatically correcting its advertising slogan. Instead of saying "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should" verbatim, he substituted "as" for "like."

He was the lead broadcaster of the network's coverage of the 1960 Winter Olympics, the first-ever time such an event was televised in the United States. He replaced Jim McKay, who had suffered a mental breakdown.

Anchor of the CBS Evening News 

On April 16, 1962, Cronkite succeeded Douglas Edwards as anchorman of the CBS's nightly feature newscast, tentatively renamed Walter Cronkite with the News, but later the CBS Evening News on September 2, 1963, when the show was expanded from 15 to 30 minutes, making Cronkite the anchor of American network television's first nightly half-hour news program. Cronkite's tenure as anchor of the CBS Evening News made him an icon in television news.

During the early part of his tenure anchoring the CBS Evening News, Cronkite competed against NBC's anchor team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, who anchored The Huntley–Brinkley Report. For much of the 1960s, The Huntley–Brinkley Report had more viewers than Cronkite's broadcast. A key moment for Cronkite came during his coverage of John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963. Another factor in Cronkite and CBS' ascendancy to the top of the ratings was that, as the decade progressed, RCA made a corporate decision not to fund NBC News at the levels that CBS provided for its news broadcasts. Consequently, CBS News acquired a reputation for greater accuracy and depth in coverage. This reputation meshed well with Cronkite's wire service experience, and in 1967 the CBS Evening News began to surpass The Huntley–Brinkley Report in viewership during the summer months.

In 1969, during the Apollo 11 (with co-host and former astronaut Wally Schirra) and Apollo 13 Moon missions, Cronkite received the best ratings and made CBS the most-watched television network for the missions. In 1970, when Huntley retired, the CBS Evening News finally dominated the American TV news viewing audience. Although NBC finally settled on the skilled and well-respected broadcast journalist John Chancellor, Cronkite proved to be more popular and continued to be top-rated until his retirement in 1981.

One of Cronkite's trademarks was ending the CBS Evening News with the phrase "...And that's the way it is," followed by the date. Keeping to standards of objective journalism, he omitted this phrase on nights when he ended the newscast with opinion or commentary. Beginning with January 16, 1980, Day 50 of the Iran hostage crisis, Cronkite added the length of the hostages' captivity to the show's closing in order to remind the audience of the unresolved situation, ending only on Day 444, January 20, 1981.

Historic moments

Kennedy's assassination 

Cronkite is vividly remembered for breaking the news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on Friday, November 22, 1963. Cronkite had been standing at the United Press International wire machine in the CBS newsroom as the bulletin of the President's shooting broke and he clamored to get on the air to break the news as he wanted CBS to be the first network to do so.

There was a problem facing the crew in the newsroom, however. There was no television camera in the studio at the time as the technical crew was working on it. Eventually, the camera was retrieved and brought back to the newsroom. Because of the magnitude of the story and the continuous flow of information coming from various sources, time was of the essence but the camera would take at least twenty minutes to become operational under normal circumstances. The decision was made to dispatch Cronkite to the CBS Radio Network booth to report the events and play the audio over the television airwaves while the crew worked on the camera to see if they could get it set up quicker.

Meanwhile, CBS was ten minutes into its live broadcast of the soap opera As the World Turns (ATWT), which had begun at the very minute of the shooting. A "CBS News Bulletin" bumper slide abruptly broke into the broadcast at 1:40 pm EST. Over the slide, Cronkite began reading what would be the first of three audio-only bulletins that were filed in the next twenty minutes:

While Cronkite was reading this bulletin, a second one arrived, mentioning the severity of Kennedy's wounds:

Just before the bulletin cut out, a CBS News staffer was heard saying "Connally too," apparently having just heard the news that Texas Governor John Connally had also been shot while riding in the presidential limousine with his wife Nellie and Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy.

CBS then rejoined the telecast of ATWT during a commercial break, which was followed by show announcer Dan McCullough's usual fee plug for the first half of the program and the network's 1:45 pm station identification break. Just before the second half of ATWT was to begin, the network broke in with the bumper slide a second time. In this bulletin Cronkite reported in greater detail about the assassination attempt on the President, while also breaking the news of Governor Connally's shooting.

Cronkite then recapped the events as they had happened: that the President and Governor Connally had been shot and were in the emergency room at Parkland Hospital, and no one knew their condition as yet. CBS then decided to return to ATWT, which was now midway through its second segment.

The cast had continued to perform live while Cronkite's bulletins broke into the broadcast, unaware of the unfolding events in Dallas. ATWT then took another scheduled commercial break. The segment before the break would be the last anyone would see of any network's programming until Tuesday, November 26. During the commercial, the bumper slide interrupted the proceedings again and Cronkite updated the viewers on the situation in Dallas. This bulletin went into more detail than the other two, revealing that Kennedy had been shot in the head, Connally in the chest. Cronkite remained on the air for the next ten minutes, continuing to read bulletins as they were handed to him, and recapping the events as they were known. He also related a report given to reporters by Texas Congressman Albert Thomas that the President and Governor were still alive, the first indication of their condition. At 2:00 pm EST, with the top of the hour station break looming, Cronkite told the audience that there would be a brief pause so that all of CBS' affiliates, including those in the Mountain and Pacific time zones which were not on the same schedule, could join the network. He then left the radio booth and went to the anchor desk in the newsroom.

Within twenty seconds of the announcement, every CBS affiliate except Dallas' KRLD (which was providing local coverage) was airing the network's feed. The camera was finally operational by this time and enabled the audience to see Cronkite, who was clad in shirt and tie but without his suit coat, given the urgent nature of the story. Cronkite reminded the audience, again, of the attempt made on the life of the President and tossed to KRLD news director Eddie Barker at the Dallas Trade Mart, where Kennedy was supposed to be making a speech before he was shot. Barker relayed information that Kennedy's condition was extremely critical. Then, after a prayer for Kennedy, Barker quoted an unofficial report that the President was dead but stressed it was not confirmed.

After several minutes, the coverage came back to the CBS newsroom where Cronkite reported that the President had been given blood transfusions and two priests had been called into the room. He also played an audio report from KRLD that someone had been arrested in the assassination attempt at the Texas School Book Depository. Back in Dallas Barker announced another report of the death of the President, mentioning that it came from a reliable source. Before the network left KRLD's feed for good, Barker first announced, then retracted, a confirmation of Kennedy's death.

CBS cut back to Cronkite reporting that one of the priests had administered last rites to the president. In the next few minutes, several more bulletins reporting that Kennedy had died were given to Cronkite, including one from CBS's own correspondent Dan Rather that had been reported as confirmation of Kennedy's demise by CBS Radio. As these bulletins came into the newsroom, it was becoming clearer that Kennedy had in fact lost his life. Cronkite, however, stressed that these bulletins were simply reports and not any official confirmation of the President's condition; some of his colleagues recounted in 2013 that his early career as a wire service reporter taught him to wait for official word before reporting a story. Still, as more word came in, Cronkite seemed to be resigned to the fact that it was only a matter of time before the assassination was confirmed. He appeared to concede this when, several minutes after he received the Rather report, he received word that the two priests who gave the last rites to Kennedy told reporters on the scene that he was dead. Cronkite said that report "seems to be as close to official as we can get", but would not declare it as such. Nor did he do so with a report from Washington, DC that came moments later, which said that government sources were now reporting the President was dead (this information was passed on to ABC as well, which took it as official confirmation and reported it as such; NBC did not report this information at all and chose instead to rely on reports from Charles Murphy and Robert MacNeil to confirm their suspicions).

At 2:38 pm EST, while filling in time with some observations about the security presence in Dallas, which had been increased due to violent acts against United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson in the city earlier that year, Cronkite was handed a new bulletin. After looking it over for a moment, he took off his glasses, and made the official announcement:

After making that announcement, Cronkite paused briefly, put his glasses back on, and swallowed hard to maintain his composure. With noticeable emotion in his voice he intoned the next sentence of the news report:

With emotion still in his voice and eyes watering, Cronkite once again recapped the events after collecting himself, incorporating some wire photos of the visit and explaining the significance of the pictures now that Kennedy was dead. He reminded the viewers that Vice President Johnson was now the President and was to be sworn in, that Governor Connally's condition was still unknown, and that there was no report of whether the assassin had been captured. He then handed the anchor position to Charles Collingwood, who had just entered the newsroom, took his suit coat, and left the room for a while.

At about 3:30 pm EST, Cronkite came back into the newsroom to relay some new information. The two major pieces of information involved the Oath of Office being administered to now-President Johnson, which officially made him the thirty-sixth President, and that Dallas police had arrested a man named Lee Harvey Oswald whom they suspected had fired the fatal shots. After that, Cronkite left again to begin preparing for that night's CBS Evening News, which he returned to anchor as normal. For the next four days, along with his colleagues, Cronkite continued to report segments of uninterrupted coverage of the assassination, including the announcement of Oswald's death in the hands of Jack Ruby on Sunday. The next day, on the day of the funeral, Cronkite concluded CBS Evening News with the following assessment about the events of the last four dark days:

Referring to his coverage of Kennedy's assassination, in a 2006 TV interview with Nick Clooney, Cronkite recalled,

In a 2003 CBS special commemorating the 40th anniversary of the assassination, Cronkite recalled his reaction upon having the death confirmed to him, he said,

According to historian Douglas Brinkley, Cronkite provided a sense of perspective throughout the unfolding sequence of disturbing events.

Vietnam War 

In mid-February 1968, on the urging of his executive producer Ernest Leiser, Cronkite and Leiser journeyed to Vietnam to cover the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. They were invited to dine with General Creighton Abrams, the commander of all forces in Vietnam, whom Cronkite knew from World War II. According to Leiser, Abrams told Cronkite, "we cannot win this Goddamned war, and we ought to find a dignified way out."

Upon return, Cronkite and Leiser wrote separate editorial reports based on that trip. Cronkite, an excellent writer, preferred Leiser's text over his own. On February 27, 1968, Cronkite closed "Report from Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why?" with that editorial report:

Following Cronkite's editorial report, President Lyndon B. Johnson is claimed by some to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." However, this account of Johnson has been questioned by other observers in books on journalistic accuracy. At the time the editorial aired, Johnson was in Austin, Texas, attending Texas Governor John Connally's birthday gala and was giving a speech in his honor.

In his book This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV, CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer, who was serving as a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram when Cronkite's editorial aired, acknowledged that Johnson did not see the original broadcast but also defended the allegation that Johnson had made the remark. According to Schieffer, Johnson's aide George Christian "told me that the President apparently saw some clips of it the next day" and that "That's when he made the remark about Cronkite. But he knew then that it would take more than Americans were willing to give it." When asked about the remark during a 1979 interview, Christian claimed he had no recollection about what the President had said. In his 1996 memoir A Reporter's Life, Cronkite claimed he was at first unsure about how much of an impact his editorial report had on Johnson's decision to drop his bid for re-election, and what eventually convinced him the President had made the statement was a recount from Bill Moyers, a journalist and former aide to Johnson.

Several weeks later, Johnson, who sought to preserve his legacy and was now convinced his declining health could not withstand growing public criticism, announced he would not seek reelection.

During the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Cronkite was anchoring the CBS network coverage as violence and protests occurred outside the convention, as well as scuffles inside the convention hall. When Dan Rather was punched to the floor (on camera) by security personnel, Cronkite commented, "I think we've got a bunch of thugs here, Dan."

Other historic events 
The first publicly transmitted live trans-Atlantic program was broadcast via the Telstar satellite on July 23, 1962, at 3:00 pm EDT, and Cronkite was one of the main presenters in this multinational broadcast. The broadcast was made possible in Europe by Eurovision and in North America by NBC, CBS, ABC, and the CBC. The first public broadcast featured CBS's Cronkite and NBC's Chet Huntley in New York, and the BBC's Richard Dimbleby in Brussels. Cronkite was in the New York studio at Rockefeller Plaza as the first pictures to be transmitted and received were the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The first segment included a televised major league baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. From there, the video switched first to Washington, D.C.; then to Cape Canaveral, Florida; then to Quebec City, Quebec, and finally to Stratford, Ontario. The Washington segment included a press conference with President Kennedy, talking about the price of the American dollar, which was causing concern in Europe. This broadcast inaugurated live intercontinental news coverage, which was perfected later in the sixties with Early Bird and other Intelsat satellites.

General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower returned to his former Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) headquarters for an interview by Cronkite on the CBS News Special Report D-Day + 20, telecast on June 6, 1964.

Cronkite is also remembered for his coverage of the United States space program, and at times was visibly enthusiastic, rubbing his hands together on camera with a smile and uttering, "Whew...boy" on July 20, 1969, when the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission put the first men on the Moon.

Cronkite participated in Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China. Because Cronkite was colorblind, he had to ask others what color of coat First Lady Pat Nixon was wearing when they disembarked in Peking (Beijing).

According to the 2006 PBS documentary on Cronkite, there was "nothing new" in his reports on the Watergate affair; however, Cronkite brought together a wide range of reporting, and his credibility and status is credited by many with pushing the Watergate story to the forefront with the American public, ultimately resulting in the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon on August 9, 1974. Cronkite had anchored the CBS coverage of Nixon's address, announcing his impending resignation, the night before.

The January 22, 1973, broadcast of the CBS Evening News saw Cronkite break the news of the death of another notable American political figure: former president Lyndon B. Johnson. At approximately 6:38 pm Eastern Time, while a pre-recorded report that the Vietnam peace talks in Paris had been successful was being played for the audience, Cronkite received a telephone call in the studio while off camera. The call was from Tom Johnson, the former press secretary for President Johnson who was at the time serving the former chief executive as station manager at KTBC-TV in Austin, Texas, which was affiliated with CBS at the time and was owned by the Johnson family. During the conversation the production staff cut away from the report back to the live camera in studio as Cronkite was still on the phone. After he was made aware that he was back on camera, Cronkite held up a finger to let everyone watching know he required a moment to let Johnson finish talking. Once Cronkite got what he needed, he thanked Johnson and asked him to stay on the line. He then turned to the camera and began to relay what Johnson had said to him.

During the final ten minutes of that broadcast, Cronkite reported on the death, giving a retrospective on the life of the nation's 36th president, and announced that CBS would air a special on Johnson later that evening. This story was re-told on a 2007 CBS-TV special honoring Cronkite's 90th birthday. 

NBC-TV's Garrick Utley, anchoring NBC Nightly News that evening, also interrupted his newscast in order to break the story, doing so about three minutes after Cronkite on CBS. The news was not reported on that night's ABC Evening News, which was anchored by Howard K. Smith and Harry Reasoner, because ABC at the time fed their newscast live at 6:00 pm Eastern instead of 6:30 to get a head start on CBS and NBC for those stations that aired ABC Evening News live (although not every affiliate did). 

On November 22, 1963, Cronkite introduced The Beatles to the United States by airing a four-minute story about the band on CBS Morning News. The story was scheduled to be shown again on the CBS Evening News that same day, but the assassination of John F. Kennedy prevented the broadcast of the regular evening news.  The Beatles story was aired on the evening news program on December 10.

Retirement 
On February 14, 1980, Cronkite announced that he intended to retire from the CBS Evening News; at the time, CBS had a policy of mandatory retirement by age 65. Although sometimes compared to a father figure or an uncle figure, in an interview about his retirement he described himself as being more like a "comfortable old shoe" to his audience. His last day in the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News was on March 6, 1981; he was succeeded the following Monday by Dan Rather.

Cronkite's farewell statement:

On the eve of Cronkite's retirement, he appeared on The Tonight Show hosted by Johnny Carson. The following night, Carson did a comic spoof of his on-air farewell address.

Other activities

Post-CBS Evening News 

As he had promised on his last show as anchor in 1981, Cronkite continued to broadcast occasionally as a special correspondent for CBS, CNN, and NPR into the 21st century; one such occasion was Cronkite anchoring the second space flight by John Glenn in 1998 as he had Glenn's first in 1962. Cronkite hosted Universe until its cancellation in 1982. In 1983, he reported on the British general election for the ITV current affairs series World In Action, interviewing, among many others, the victorious Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Cronkite hosted the annual Vienna New Year's Concert on PBS from 1985 to 2008, succeeded by Julie Andrews in 2009. For many years, until 2002, he was also the host of the annual Kennedy Center Honors.

In 1998, Cronkite hosted the 90-minute documentary, Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, produced by the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association. The film documented Silicon Valley's rise from the origin of Stanford University to the current high-technology powerhouse. The documentary was broadcast on PBS throughout the United States and in 26 countries. Prior to 2004, he could also be seen in the opening movie "Back to Neverland" shown in the Walt Disney World attraction The Magic of Disney Animation, interviewing Robin Williams as if he is still on the CBS News channel, ending his on-camera time with Cronkite's famous catchphrase. In the feature, Cronkite describes the steps taken in the creation of an animated film, while Williams becomes an animated character (and even becomes Cronkite, impersonating his voice). He also was shown inviting Disney guests and tourists to the Disney Classics Theater.

On May 21, 1999, Cronkite participated in a panel discussion on "Integrity in the Media" with Ben Bradlee and Mike McCurry at the Connecticut Forum in Hartford, Connecticut. Cronkite provided an anecdote about taking a picture from a house in Houston, Texas, where a newsworthy event occurred and being praised for getting a unique photograph, only to find out later that the city desk had provided him with the wrong address.

Voice-overs 
Cronkite narrated the IMAX film about the Space Shuttle, The Dream is Alive, released in 1985. From May 26, 1986, to August 15, 1994, he was the narrator's voice in the EPCOT Center attraction Spaceship Earth, at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. He provided the pivotal voice of Captain Neweyes in the 1993 animated film We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story, delivering his trademark line at the end. In 1995, he made an appearance on Broadway, providing the voice of the titular book in the 1995 revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Cronkite was a finalist for NASA's Journalist in Space program, which mirrored the Teacher in Space Project, an opportunity that was suspended after the Challenger disaster in 1986. He recorded voice-overs for the 1995 film Apollo 13, modifying the script he was given to make it more "Cronkitian." In 2002, Cronkite was the voice of Benjamin Franklin in the educational television cartoon Liberty's Kids, which included a news segment ending with the same phrase he did back on the CBS Evening News. This role earned him Daytime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series, in 2003 and 2004, but he did not win. His distinctive voice provided the narration for the television ads of the University of Texas, Austin, his alma mater, with its 'We're Texas' ad campaign.

He held amateur radio operator license KB2GSD and narrated a 2003 American Radio Relay League documentary explaining amateur radio's role in disaster relief. The video tells Amateur Radio's public service story to non-hams, focusing on ham radio's part in helping various agencies respond to wildfires in the Western US during 2002, ham radio in space and the role Amateur Radio plays in emergency communications. "Dozens of radio amateurs helped the police and fire departments and other emergency services maintain communications in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC," narrator Cronkite intoned in reference to ham radio's response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Unusually, Cronkite was a Novice-class licensee—the entry level license—for his entire, and long, tenure in the hobby.

On February 15, 2005, he went into the studio at CBS to record narration for WCC Chatham Radio, a documentary about Guglielmo Marconi and his Chatham station, which became the busiest ship-to-shore wireless station in North America from 1914 to 1994. The documentary was directed by Christopher Seufert of Mooncusser Films and premiered at the Chatham Marconi Maritime Center in April 2005. In 2006, Cronkite hosted the World War One Living History Project, a program honoring America's final handful of veterans from the First World War. The program was created by Treehouse Productions and aired on NPR on November 11, 2006. In May 2009, Legacy of War, produced by PBS, was released. Cronkite chronicles, over archive footage, the events following World War II that resulted in America's rise as the dominant world power.

Prior to his death, "Uncle Walter" hosted a number of TV specials and was featured in interviews about the times and events that occurred during his career as America's "most trusted" man. In July 2006, the 90-minute documentary Walter Cronkite: Witness to History aired on PBS. The special was narrated by Katie Couric, who assumed the CBS Evening News anchor chair in September 2006. Cronkite provided the voiceover introduction to Couric's CBS Evening News, which began on September 5, 2006. Cronkite's voiceover was notably not used on introducing the broadcast reporting his funeral – no voiceover was used on this occasion.

TV and movie appearances 
Cronkite made a cameo appearance on a 1974 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in which he met with Lou Grant in his office. Ted Baxter, who at first tried to convince Cronkite that he (Baxter) was as good a newsman as Eric Sevareid, pleaded with Cronkite to hire him for the network news, at least to give sport scores, and gave an example: "The North Stars 3, the Kings Oh!" Cronkite turned to Grant and said, "I'm gonna get you for this!" Cronkite later said that he was disappointed that his scene was filmed in one take, since he had hoped to sit down and chat with the cast.

In the late 1980s and again in the 1990s, Cronkite appeared on the news-oriented situation comedy Murphy Brown as himself. Both episodes were written by the Emmy Award-winning team of Tom Seeley and Norm Gunzenhauser. He also continued hosting a variety of series.  In the early 1980s, he was host of the documentary series World War II with Walter Cronkite.  In 1991, he hosted the TV documentary Dinosaur! on A&E (not related to the documentary of the same title hosted by Christopher Reeve on CBS six years earlier), and a 1994 follow-up series, Ape Man: The Story of Human Evolution. In 1995, he narrated the World Liberty Concert held in the Netherlands.

Cronkite routinely hosted the Kennedy Center Honors from 1981 to 2002.

Cronkite appeared briefly in the 2005 dramatic documentary The American Ruling Class written by Lewis Lapham; the 2000 film Thirteen Days reporting on the Cuban Missile Crisis; and provided the opening synopsis of the American Space Program leading to the events in Apollo 13 for the 1995 Ron Howard film of the same name.

Political activism 

Cronkite wrote a syndicated opinion column for King Features Syndicate. In 2005 and 2006, he contributed to The Huffington Post. Cronkite was the honorary chairman of The Interfaith Alliance. In 2006, he presented the Walter Cronkite Faith and Freedom Award to actor and activist George Clooney on behalf of his organization at its annual dinner in New York.

Cronkite was a vocal advocate for free airtime for political candidates. He worked with the Alliance for Better Campaigns and Common Cause, for instance, on an unsuccessful lobbying effort to have an amendment added to the McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2001 that would have required TV broadcast companies to provide free airtime to candidates. Cronkite criticized the present system of campaign finance which allows elections to "be purchased" by special interests, and he noted that all the European democracies "provide their candidates with extensive free airtime." "In fact," Cronkite pointed out, "of all the major nations worldwide that profess to have democracies, only seven – just seven – do not offer free airtime" This put the United States on a list with Ecuador, Honduras, Malaysia, Taiwan, Tanzania, and Trinidad and Tobago. Cronkite concluded that "The failure to give free airtime for our political campaigns endangers our democracy." During the elections held in 2000, the amount spent by candidates in the major TV markets approached $1 billion. "What our campaign asks is that the television industry yield just a tiny percentage of that windfall, less than 1 percent, to fund free airtime."

He was a member of the Constitution Project's bipartisan Liberty and Security Committee. He also supported the nonprofit world hunger organization Heifer International.

In 1998, he supported President Bill Clinton during Clinton's impeachment trial. He was also a proponent of limited world government on the American federalist model, writing fundraising letters for the World Federalist Association (now Citizens for Global Solutions). In accepting the 1999 Norman Cousins Global Governance Award at the ceremony at the United Nations, Cronkite said:

It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace. To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order. But the American colonies did it once and brought forth one of the most nearly perfect unions the world has ever seen.

Cronkite contrasted his support for accountable global government with the opposition to it by politically active Christian fundamentalists in the United States:

Even as with the American rejection of the League of Nations, our failure to live up to our obligations to the United Nations is led by a handful of willful senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation's conscience. They pander to and are supported by the Christian Coalition and the rest of the religious right wing. Their leader, Pat Robertson, has written that we should have a world government but only when the messiah arrives. Any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil! Well join me... I'm glad to sit here at the right hand of Satan.

In 2003, Cronkite, who owned property on Martha's Vineyard, became involved in a long-running debate over his opposition to the construction of a wind farm in that area. In his column, he repeatedly condemned President George W. Bush and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Cronkite appeared in the 2004 Robert Greenwald film Outfoxed, where he offered commentary on what he said were unethical and overtly political practices at the Fox News Channel. Cronkite remarked that when Fox News was founded by Rupert Murdoch, "it was intended to be a conservative organization – beyond that; a far-right-wing organization". In January 2006, during a press conference to promote the PBS documentary about his career, Cronkite said that he felt the same way about America's presence in Iraq as he had about their presence in Vietnam in 1968 and that he felt America should recall its troops.

Cronkite spoke out against the War on Drugs in support of the Drug Policy Alliance, writing a fundraising letter and appearing in advertisements on behalf of the DPA. In the letter, Cronkite wrote: "Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens. I am speaking of the war on drugs. And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure."

Personal life 

Cronkite was married for nearly 65 years to Mary Elizabeth 'Betsy' Maxwell Cronkite, from March 30, 1940, until her death from cancer on March 15, 2005. They had three children: Nancy Cronkite, Mary Kathleen (Kathy) Cronkite, and Walter Leland (Chip) Cronkite III (who is married to actress Deborah Rush). Cronkite dated singer Joanna Simon from 2005 to 2009.
A grandson, Walter Cronkite IV, now works at CBS. Cronkite's cousin is former Mayor of Kansas City and 2008 Democratic nominee for Missouri's 6th congressional district Kay Barnes.

Cronkite was an accomplished sailor and enjoyed sailing coastal waters of the United States in his custom-built 48-foot Sunward "Wyntje". Cronkite was a member of the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, with the honorary rank of commodore. Throughout the 1950s, he was an aspiring sports car racer, even racing in the 1959 12 Hours of Sebring.

Cronkite was reported to be a fan of the game Diplomacy, which was rumored to be Henry Kissinger's favorite game.

Death 
In June 2009, Cronkite was reported to be terminally ill. He died on July 17, 2009, at his home in New York City aged 92. He is believed to have died from cerebrovascular disease.
Cronkite's funeral took place on July 23, 2009, at St. Bartholomew's Church in midtown Manhattan, New York City. Among many journalists who attended were Tom Brokaw, Connie Chung, Katie Couric, Charles Gibson, Matt Lauer, Dan Rather, Andy Rooney, Morley Safer, Diane Sawyer, Bob Schieffer, Meredith Vieira, Barbara Walters, and Brian Williams. At his funeral, his friends noted his love of music, including, recently, drumming. He was cremated and his remains buried next to his wife, Betsy, in the family plot in Kansas City.

Legacy

Public credibility and trustworthiness 
For many years, until a decade after he left his post as anchor, Cronkite was considered one of the most trusted figures in the United States. For most of his 19 years as anchor, he was the "predominant news voice in America." Affectionately known as "Uncle Walter," he covered many of the important news events of the era so effectively that his image and voice are closely associated with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the Watergate scandal. USA Today wrote that "few TV figures have ever had as much power as Cronkite did at his height." Enjoying the cult of personality surrounding Cronkite in those years, CBS allowed some good-natured fun-poking at its star anchorman in some episodes of the network's popular situation comedy All in the Family, during which the lead character Archie Bunker would sometimes complain about the newsman, calling him "Pinko Cronkite."

Cronkite trained himself to speak at a rate of 124 words per minute in his newscasts, so that viewers could clearly understand him. In contrast, Americans average about 165 words per minute, and fast, difficult-to-understand talkers speak close to 200 words per minute.

Awards and honors 

In 1968, the faculty of the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University voted to award Cronkite the Carr Van Anda Award "for enduring contributions to journalism." In 1970, Cronkite received a "Freedom of the Press" George Polk Award and the Paul White Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association.

In 1972, in recognition of his career, Princeton University's American Whig-Cliosophic Society awarded Cronkite the James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service.

In 1981, the year he retired, former president Jimmy Carter awarded Cronkite the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In that year, he also received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards, and the Paul White Award for lifetime achievement from the Radio Television Digital News Association. In 1985, Cronkite was honored with the induction into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. In 1989 he received the Four Freedoms Award for the Freedom of Speech. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1994. In 1995, he received the Ischia International Journalism Award. In 1999, Cronkite received the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement's Corona Award in recognition of a lifetime of achievement in space exploration. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. On March 1, 2006, Cronkite became the first non-astronaut to receive NASA's Ambassador of Exploration Award. Among Cronkite's numerous awards were four Peabody awards for excellence in broadcasting.

In 2003, Cronkite was honored by the Vienna Philharmonic with the Franz Schalk Gold Medal, in view of his contributions to the New Year's Concert and the cultural image of Austria.

Minor planet 6318 Cronkite, discovered in 1990 by Eleanor Helin is named in his honor.

Cronkite School at Arizona State University 

A few years after Cronkite retired, Tom Chauncey, a former owner of KOOL-TV, the then-CBS affiliate in Phoenix, contacted Cronkite, an old friend, and asked him if he would be willing to have the journalism school at Arizona State University named after him. Cronkite immediately agreed. The ASU program acquired status and respect from its namesake.

Cronkite was not just a namesake, but he also took the time to interact with the students and staff of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Cronkite made the trip to Arizona annually to present the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism to a leader in the field of media.

"The values that Mr. Cronkite embodies – excellence, integrity, accuracy, fairness, objectivity – we try to instill in our students each and every day. There is no better role model for our faculty or our students," said Dean Christopher Callahan.

The school, with approximately 1,700 students, is widely regarded as one of the top journalism schools in the country. It is housed in a new facility in downtown Phoenix that is equipped with 14 digital newsrooms and computer labs, two TV studios, 280 digital student work stations, the Cronkite Theater, the First Amendment Forum, and new technology. The school's students regularly finish at the top of national collegiate journalism competitions, such as the Hearst Journalism Awards program and the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards. In 2009, students won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for college print reporting.

In 2008, the state-of-the-art journalism education complex in the heart of ASU's Downtown Phoenix campus was also built in his honor. The Walter Cronkite Regents Chair in Communication seats the Texas College of Communications dean.

Walter Cronkite Papers 

The Walter Cronkite papers are preserved at the curatorial Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. Occupying 293 linear feet (almost 90 metres) of shelf space, the papers document Cronkite's journalism career. Amongst the collected material are Cronkite's early beginnings while he still lived in Houston. They encompass his coverage of World War II as a United Press International correspondent, where he cemented his reputation by taking on hazardous overseas assignments. During this time he also covered the Nuremberg war crimes trial serving as the chief of the United Press bureau in Moscow. The main content of the papers documents Cronkite's career with CBS News between 1950 and 1981.

The Cronkite Papers assemble a variety of interviews with U.S. presidents, including Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Ronald Reagan. President Lyndon Johnson requested a special interview with Cronkite while he was broadcasting live on CBS.

Between 1990 and 1993, Don Carleton, executive director for the Center for American History, assisted Cronkite as he compiled an oral history to write his autobiography, A Reporter's Life, which was published in 1996. The taped memoirs became an integral part of an eight-part television series Cronkite Remembers, which was shown on the Discovery Channel.

As a newsman, Cronkite devoted his attention to the early days of the space program, and the "space race" between the United States and the Soviet Union. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration honored Cronkite on February 28, 2006. Michael Coats, director of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, presented Cronkite with the Ambassador of Exploration Award. Cronkite was the first non-astronaut thus honored.

NASA presented Cronkite with a Moon rock sample from the early Apollo expeditions spanning 1969 to 1972. Cronkite passed on the Moon rock to Bill Powers, president of the University of Texas at Austin, and it became part of the collection at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. Carleton said at this occasion, "We are deeply honored by Walter Cronkite's decision to entrust this prestigious award to the Center for American History. The Center already serves as the proud steward of his professional and personal papers, which include his coverage of the space program for CBS News. It is especially fitting that the archive documenting Walter's distinguished career should also include one of the moon rocks that the heroic astronauts of the Apollo program brought to Earth."

Memorial at Missouri Western State University 
On November 4, 2013, Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, Missouri, dedicated the Walter Cronkite Memorial. The nearly 6,000 square-foot memorial includes images, videos and memorabilia from Cronkite's life and the many events he covered as a journalist. The memorial includes a replica of the newsroom from which Cronkite broadcast the news during the 1960s and 1970s. In 2014, the Memorial received the Missouri Division of Tourism's Spotlight Award.

Books 
 The Challenges of Change (1971). Washington: Public Affairs Press. .
 Eye on the World (1971). New York:  Cowles Book Co. .
 A Reporter's Life (1996). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. .

See also 
 New Yorkers in journalism
 Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

References

Further reading 
 
 
 Menand, Louis, "Seeing It Now: Walter Cronkite and the legend of CBS News", The New Yorker, July 9, 2012

External links 

 "Walter Cronkite, 92, Dies; Trusted Voice of TV News", The New York Times (July 17, 2009)
 
 The Walter Cronkite Papers at the University of Texas at Austin
 
 
 FBI Records: The Vault - Walter Leland Cronkite at vault.fbi.gov
 

1916 births
2009 deaths
20th-century American journalists
American male journalists
60 Minutes correspondents
Amateur radio people
American broadcast news analysts
American game show hosts
American television news anchors
American television reporters and correspondents
CBS News people
Drug policy reform activists
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Journalists from Houston
Oklahoma Sooners football announcers
Peabody Award winners
People from St. Joseph, Missouri
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American war correspondents of World War II
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A wedge issue is a political or social issue, often of a controversial or divisive nature, which splits apart a demographic or population group.  Wedge issues can be advertised or publicly aired in an attempt to strengthen the unity of a population, with the goal of enticing polarized individuals to give support to an opponent or to withdraw their support entirely out of disillusionment.  The use of wedge issues gives rise to wedge politics.  Wedge issues are also known as hot button or third rail issues.

Political campaigns use wedge issues to soften tension within a targeted population.  A wedge issue may often be a point of internal dissent within an opposing party, which that party attempts to suppress or ignore discussing because it divides "the base".  Typically, wedge issues have a cultural or populist theme, relating to matters such as crime, national security, sexuality (e.g. same-sex marriage), abortion or race.  A party may introduce a wedge issue to an opposing population, while aligning itself with the dissenting faction of the opposition. A wedge issue, when introduced, is intended to bring about such things as:

 A debate, often vitriolic, within the opposing party, giving the public a perception of disarray.
 The defection of supporters of the opposing party's minority faction to the other party (or independent parties) if they lose the debate.
 The legitimising of sentiment which, while perhaps popularly held, is usually considered inappropriate; criticisms from the opposition then make it appear beholden to special interests or fringe ideology.
 In an extreme case, a wedge issue might contribute to the actual fracture of the opposing party as another party spins off, taking voters with it.

To prevent these consequences from occurring, the opposing party may attempt to take a "pragmatic" stand and officially endorse the views of its minority faction. However, this can lead to the defection of supporters of the opposing party's majority faction to a third party, should they lose the debate.

Examples

Australia 

A case study of the use of wedge issues in practice comes from the 2001 federal election campaign in Australia. In early and mid-2001, a great deal of public attention was focused on boat people (asylum seekers arriving on unauthorised vessels), there having been several widely publicised landings of hundreds of people. On August 24, 2001, a ship illegally bearing 460 such people became distressed, and its passengers were picked up by the Norwegian cargo vessel MV Tampa.

The governing Liberal Party of Australia took the opportunity to appear tough on asylum seekers. The opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) had a slight majority of people strongly favouring more sympathetic treatment, and was hence perceived as internally split. This provoked a fierce debate within the ALP on the relative merits of siding with national opinion (in favour of the Government's actions) or standing on party principle (opposing). But with over 90% of some television polls supporting the government's stance, the leader of the ALP Kim Beazley chose to silence the majority and agree to the tougher policy—though it ended up opposing certain elements of proposed legislation, which the Liberal Party blasted as "weak on border security".

The damage was done, with the party appearing inconsistent and divided. The Liberal Party campaigned largely on a platform of border security and increased its support at the federal election that November despite being the incumbent. Some who would typically vote Labor voted instead for the Greens and the Democrats in protest against what they saw as the ALP's complicity.

It was later claimed that the controversial campaign strategists Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor had an active role in making the Tampa incident a wedge issue for Howard to exploit.

United States 

For example, some Republican strategists have hoped that African Americans, a traditionally Democratic voting bloc, yet also one that possesses some of the most conservative views on matters of homosexuality, may be more inclined to vote for the Republican Party because of their opposition to gay marriage. In 2012, internal National Organization for Marriage memos dating to 2009 were released that stated that they sought "to drive a wedge between gays and  blacks" by promoting "African American spokespeople for marriage", thus provoking same-sex marriage supporters into "denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots", and to "interrupt" the "assimilation" of Latinos into "dominant Anglo culture" by making the stance against same-sex marriage "a key badge of Latino identity".

Likewise, Democratic strategists have hoped that the issue of stem cell research could be used as a wedge issue against the right, since some Republicans support the research while others are morally opposed to the use of embryonic cells in research.

The well known political science mantra "God, guns and gays" typifies the Republican wedge strategy crafted alongside other famous wedge issues beginning in the Nixon era, aiding the party in winning the South from the Democrats.

Reform of the laws regarding illegal immigration to the United States operated as a wedge issue in 2007. Some Republican legislators, with the backing of President George W. Bush, sought to address the dual issues of ongoing illegal immigration to the United States and the illegal status of an estimated 12 million people currently living in America. Other Republicans bitterly opposed any "amnesty" for illegal immigrants, out of fear that their constituents were unsupportive of immigration reform. Some Democrats pitched in to keep the issue alive as they recognized the issue was deeply dividing the Republican party between advocates of reform and advocates of the status quo. The result was a bitter division in Republican ranks and a stalled bill in Congress. After the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the views of American voters shifted to align more closely with their parties along partisan lines, reducing immigration policy's status as a wedge issue.

See also 
 Attack ad
 Divide and rule
 Dog-whistle politics
 Negative campaigning
 Propaganda
 Push poll
 Salami tactics

References

Political terminology of the United States
Political concepts
Populism
Political terminology in Australia Frederick Rhinaldo Wedge (July 31, 1880 – March 3, 1953) was an American boxer who fought over 70 professional bouts as "Kid" Wedge; an ordained clergyman, who pastored churches in Nebraska, Wisconsin, and California for the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Congregational denominations; a Chautauqua lecturer; an author of several books, including The Fighting Parson of Barbary Coast; and an educator, who taught at Pasadena College, and high schools in Arizona and California, whose admission into the Graduate School of Education of Harvard University in January 1922, and his January 1929 second marriage were both a national cause célèbre in the USA.

Early life and family
Frederick Rhinaldo Wedge was born on July 31, 1880 in Michigan, United States of America, the son of Hugh Wedge (born in Michigan), and Nettie Hunter Wedge (born in Michigan).

Wedge grew up in Martinez, Mecosta County, Michigan. When he was two years old, his father was killed. His mother subsequently married a man who proved to be physically abusive to both her and Wedge. After his mother died when he was 8, making him an orphan, his stepfather abandoned him, and he was sent to live with his father's brother, Isaac Wedge (born December 1856 in French Canada), a sawmill man, and aunt Alice Hunter (born June 1861 in Michigan), who lived at 137 Eagle Street, Pelican, Wisconsin.

As a young boy Wedge worked as a newsboy and sold newspapers, having to defend his location against "street arabs" and prevent theft, and later worked as a helper in various Wisconsin lumber camps, before becoming a lumberjack in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Wedge soon acquired a reputation as a hard drinker and tough fighter, and "took delight in starting drunken brawls in  Rhinelander" and other logging camps, or assaulting policemen. with several convictions for drunk and disorderly conduct, serving a total of 105 days in the Oneida County jail. During this time, Wedge was considered "the rough-and-tumble champion of northern Wisconsin".

Boxing career
By the age of 18 Wedge became a pugilist, fighting under the name "Kid" Wedge. Additionally, Wedge fought in many bar fights, resulting in his skull being fractured twice. Wedge was considered "one of the best rough-and-tumble fighters in the days when loggers and lumberjacks considered gouging, strangling and stamping with their hobnailed boots as fair in a fight". Among his opponents were Clarence English, Abdul the Turk and Jack Carrig.

Wedge fought as "Kid" Wedge in at least seventy professional boxing contests in seven years from 1899. Wedge was discovered and managed by Bill Daniels. Wedge's first professional fight was a ten-round bout with Chicago Jack Glenn, who had ten years professional boxing experience, with Wedge winning in the 9th round after Glenn's corner threw in the sponge after Glenn broke his right hand. On Saturday, July 23, 1904, Wedge was arrested "on suspicion" by a local police officer in Oshkosh, Wisconsin and ordered to leave town by the police chief.

After three fights in Omaha in the summer of 1905, Wedge met his future wife, Prudence Olive Tracy, for the first time after a concert in Omaha. After realizing that he was uncultured and lacking in education, and with Prudence's encouragement, Wedge began a course of self-education guided by a retired doctor. At the age of 22, Wedge had been illiterate, being unable to read or write. About 1905 Wedge entered a preparatory school and completed twelve years of education in six years. His tutor assisted him with his grammar school education in the evenings after working ten hours each day as a lumberjack. Eventually Wedge graduated from the Rhinelander High School, Rhinelander, Wisconsin.

Wedge was converted in a religious meeting in June 1906 conducted by Presbyterian evangelist Rev. Hay Red Bell (born July 22, 1862 in Illinois; died November 16, 1917 in Missouri), a graduate of Moody Bible Institute. By November 1906 Wedge came to believe that it was wrong to fight except in self-defense, and that he should devote his life to Christian service. Other factors in his decision to retire were that he may have been the loser of several of his more recent bouts, and was also remorseful over the death of an opponent in San Francisco. and was encouraged to do so by Prudence Tracy.

At the time of his retirement in November 1906, Wedge was the lightweight champion of Arkansas. Wedge, who was scheduled to fight Guy Buckles in front of 2,000 fans over six rounds on a sand bar south of Omaha, Nebraska, announced his retirement before the bout to devote his life to Christian service and then gave Buckles a religious tract and a New Testament. Buckles, who was insulted by Wedge's actions, punched Wedge on the nose, however Wedge refused to retaliate, choosing instead to "turn the other cheek". However, after another blow from Buckles, Wedge indicated: "I have not been told what to do next, but I guess I can pound you to pulp without interfering with my conscience". In the ensuing altercation, both fighters were severely disfigured, but Wedge was adjudged the winner. Wedge indicated that he would pray for Buckles.

Ministry and education

Nebraska (1906–1910)
In 1906 Wedge was admitted to the University of Nebraska, and completed his first year in June 1907.

First Presbyterian Church, Barneston (1907–1908)
By September 1907 Wedge was appointed the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in the small village of Barneston, Nebraska, where the Presbyterians had constructed a church building in 1889. However, by March 1908 Wedge had suffered a nervous breakdown.

In November 1908 Wedge announced he would resume boxing as he could not make a living as a preacher, and that he would fight Walter Stanton of San Francisco in Omaha in early December.

On February 22, 1909 Wedge preached a 17-minute sermon just prior to the Buckles-Hanson prize fight in Omaha, Nebraska. On Friday, September 3, 1909, Wedge preached a short sermon and sang a hymn before the fight between Dick Fitzpatrick of Chicago and Guy Buckles.

Omaha Presbyterian Theological Seminary (1908–1909)
After completing three years at the University of Nebraska, in 1908 Wedge transferred to the Omaha Presbyterian Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian seminary in North Omaha, Nebraska, for a year in order to complete the requirements for ordination in the Presbyterian Church. To finance his studies, Wedge gave boxing lessons in Omaha.

Presbyterian Church, Monroe, Nebraska (1909–1910)
After graduation from Omaha Theological Seminary in September 1909 Wedge was ordained by the Nebraska Presbytery, and elected pastor of the small Presbyterian Church in Monroe, Nebraska, but later was forced to leave due to opposition to his pugilistic past, and the embarrassment caused by his fiancée canceling their wedding amid rumors of Wedge's  immorality.

San Francisco (1910–1911)
After his fiancée Prudence Tracy cancelled their planned wedding in 1909, Wedge left university in his junior year and moved to San Francisco. By the end of April 1910 Wedge moved to San Francisco and lived in a boarding house at 633 Vallejo Street in San Francisco and served as a missionary to San Francisco's Barbary Coast, described as the "most infamous blot on the underworld, where depravity reigned supreme, despite the officers of the law, and where booze and immoral women turned men to moral lepers".
Herbert Asbury described the Barbary Coast: "The slums of Singapore at their foulest, the dens of Shanghai at their dirtiest, the waterfront at Port Said at its vicious worst – none of these backwaters of depravity and vice ... achieved the depths of corruption that typified the 'Barbary Coast'". When Wedge arrived there was "over six hundred dance halls and dives" in "a district little over half a mile square". Engaged by the City of San Francisco, during the next few months, Wedge "waged a campaign on vice and corruption in Chinatown and the Barbary Coast". A contemporary report indicates that Wedge "carried the battle to the very doors of the hidden opium dens; he ferreted out the leaders of the tong wars and slave girl rings, and left Chinatown renovated spiritually". Wedge's ministry was considered one of the factors responsible for the amelioration of conditions on San Francisco's Barbary Coast. Wedge also was director of boy's work among the newsboys of San Francisco.

On December 1, 1910, Wedge was arrested and incarcerated in the city jail on charges of battery for attempting to strike a night watchman named Gus Miller and begging after being found on Fifth Street near Market Street at 4.30am. Wedge denied the allegations and explained his alcoholic odor as due to his incarceration with drunks and "wine bums", and that he possessed port wine given to him by the Hahnemann Hospital to prevent pneumonia. Wedge was given the sobriquet "The Fighting Parson of the Barbary Coast". In 1917 Wedge explained its origin: "I was preaching on a beer keg in a saloon on the Barbary coast in San Francisco when a couple of toughs went for me. I guess maybe I cleaned out the place then. A reporter on the San Francisco newspaper gave me the name. He said I was a fellow who, if he could not preach good into men, would knock h—l out of them. Those fellows got me, though, and put me in the hospital for a while". After being hospitalized after a vicious assault by several denizens of the Barbary Coast at the corner of Pacific and Montgomery avenues, by the end of 1910 Wedge decided to return to Omaha to recuperate and to attempt to reconcile with Prudence Tracy.

After his marriage to Prudence on December 18, 1910, the newly weds returned to San Francisco to continue Wedge's ministry in the Tenderloin.

Nebraska (1912–1913)

Presbyterian Church, Genoa (1912)
By January 1912 Wedge had become the pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Genoa, Nebraska. After his return to Nebraska, Wedge re-enrolled at the University of Nebraska.  Wedge's only child, Hugh T. Wedge (died January 20, 1991 in Lake Havasu City, Arizona) was born on January 13, 1912 in Genoa. Wedge had a "fistic encounter" with a lawyer named Rose, whom Wedge whipped in the public street. In the subsequent hearing held by the Kearney Presbytery in July 1912, Wedge admitted conduct unbecoming a minister, and renounced his allegiance to the presbytery. The Presbytery terminated his pastorate at Genoa on July 24, 1912, and suspended him on the ground of insubordination from any ministerial activity until his trial in September.

During his suspension from the ministry, Wedge wrote a novel, The Fighting Parson of Barbary Coast, based in part on his own life and ministry, which was published by November 1912. Wedge dedicated it to Prudence: "to the noble woman who saw good in me when others saw evil; who believed I would win despite every handicap." Wedge trained "Battling" Nelson at St. Joe, Wisconsin in early September as he was "run down and needed the exercise", where he also engaged in street preaching.

On September 24, 1912, Wedge was found not guilty of all charges, after he explained that Rose had "attempted pugilistic tactics by insolent words and by puffing out his chest, ... he annoyed my wife when she was in poor health". Wedge refused $3,000 to box again on the orpheum circuit and another offer of $125 a week to play a militant preacher in a New York Bowery play, in order to accept the Presbyterian Church's offer to be an evangelist on the Nebraska home mission district for $800 a year.

About 1912 Wedge held a series of religious meetings at the Presbyterian church in Table Rock, Nebraska. In December 1912 Wedge was tried but found not guilty in the "celebrated" trial of State v. Fred Wedge in Nebraska.

On June 5, 1913 Wedge announced his resignation from the ministry in Eureka, California, as "the call of the blood was too strong". Wedge announced: "I am quitting the ministry for several sufficient reasons. My forehead is too low, my jaw is too square. I like the things of the world too well".
A few hours later Wedge was arrested and incarcerated overnight in the city jail due to public intoxication after a charge by Rev. Arthur Hayes Sargent (Born May 18, 1879 in Corinth, Vermont; died August 9, 1969 in Portland, Maine), pastor of the Eureka Universalist church, who with some other local ministers had tried to rescue him. However, on September 21, 1913 Wedge spoke at the Church of Christ in Lincoln, Nebraska.

By May 1914 Wedge was claimed to have fought and "never suffered defeat", and in 1922 his record was given as having "fought 70 fights and lost but three of them".

In the Summer of 1914 Wedge gave lectures on his life at Chautauquas at Lodi, California in May, Modesto, California in June, and Butte, Montana in July.
In December 1914 The Beatrice Daily Sun reported Wedge's "fall from grace".

Wisconsin (1916–1917)

First Baptist Church, Rhinelander (1916–1917)
By May 1916 Wedge became the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. While pastoring the Rhineland church, Wedge complete courses at the University of Wisconsin. Despite his retirement from boxing, Wedge, known as "the Fighting Parson", supported the sport indicating that it was more clean and wholesome than in his era, and inspired youth to lead clean and healthy lives. Consequently, in January 1917 Wedge applied for a license to organize and manage the Rhinelander Amateur Athletic Association in order to train his Sunday School boys and hold bouts in their gymnasium. The Wisconsin Athletic Association approved their licensing on January 2, 1917.

On January 10, 1917 Wedge was arrested on a charge of using slanderous language on January 1, 1917 to a former member of his congregation, whom Wedge had ousted from church membership for irregular conduct. On January 13, 1917, Wedge was jailed for a few hours in Rhinelander after being found guilty of using abusive language. After pleading not guilty, Wedge admitted the charge, but indicated he had been provoked, and refused to pay the fine of $5 and costs. Wedge was released after the fine was paid anonymously. On February 18, 1917 Wedge was admitted to St. Mary's Hospital after collapsing while preaching in the evening service at the Rhinelander First Baptist Church, and was unable to complete the service. On February 23, 1918 Wedge resigned from the First Baptist church due to his health and departed for Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he planned to remain until he regained his health and then return to his pastorate.

After his resignation from the Rhinelander pastorate, Wedge worked erecting silos, but quit as it did not meet his income needs. By July 1917 Wedge had moved to St. Louis, Missouri. After the USA entered World War I, Wedge attempted to enlist in the US Army in order to fight overseas, but was rejected despite being physically fit, because of his use of a dental plate due to his "shortage of teeth, accounted for by the numerous pugilistic encounters he had before entering the ministry". After being rejected for military service, Wedge obtained a job working in a munitions factory in St. Louis, Missouri.

By August 1, 1917 Wedge found employment as a brakeman for the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad on the Antigo, Wisconsin to Ashland, Wisconsin line, earning $125 a month, with which he hoped to pay off his debts and accumulate a small "nest egg". Later that month Wedge was involved in a street fight at the rear of a downtown saloon in Antigo, Wisconsin with a "ham and egger" named "Fighting Leach", that was broken up by the police. Wedge was charged with disorderly conduct, found guilty, and the sentence was suspended.

Wedge discontinued his studies at the University of Nebraska in 1917 in his Senior year and the family moved to Chicago, Illinois.

Illinois (1917–1918)

Olivet Presbyterian Church, Chicago (1917)
Wedge moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he was the assistant pastor of the Olivet Presbyterian Church in Chicago, where he had 300 young men in his athletic Bible class. At this time Wedge also was the director of the Junior Boys' club of Olivet.
While in Chicago, Wedge did a post-graduate course in Greek, Hebrew, and other subjects at the McCormick Theological Seminary.

YMCA secretary, Camp Grant (1917–1918)
By the end of November 1917, Wedge and his family moved to Rockford, Illinois, where his wife's younger sister Eunice D. Tracy (born 1874 in Ohio) lived. As Wedge had been previously refused admission into the US Army, and as he believed that boxing training would help American soldiers defeat the Germans, Wedge volunteered to be a civilian boxing instructor for the United States Army at Camp Grant near Rockford, Illinois, where he also ministered to the men of the 341st Infantry, 35th Engineers, and the Quartermaster Corps. While at Camp Grant, Wedge became the secretary for the YMCA building No. 4 at Camp Grant, and formed an Ironsides Bible Class among the 86th Division, reviving the motto of Oliver Cromwell's Ironsides: "The Lord of hosts is with us". In December 1917 Wedge was found guilty of using abusive language.

After being hospitalized after a severe bout of influenza in the Winter of 1917–1918, Wedge was diagnosed as having "hasty consumption" (incurable tuberculosis) and given only 2–3 months to live, with the recommendation that he move to a warmer climate. In April 1918 Wedge was discharged from his duties at Camp Grant.

Texas (1918–1919)
In late April 1918 Wedge was transported to El Paso, Texas, where after a few weeks he worked as a street car motorman for the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad. In May 1918 Wedge wrote: "Whether I get well or die, I am going to keep smiling as long as I can get a bit of air in these old lungs of mine". Needing funds to relocate from El Paso, Texas to Tucson, Arizona to enroll in the University of Arizona, and after extensive training which he believed cured him of tuberculosis, and hoping to be able to return to his position as a boxing trainer in the US Army, Wedge returned briefly to the ring by September 1918. After bouts with two border army corps men in preceding months, on January 1, 1919, Hedge fought Sergeant Tommy Murphy, the welterweight champion of the Southwestern United States, who was serving with the US 5th Cavalry at Fort Bliss,. but was knocked out early in the fight and lost the ten round fight on a points decision. Wedge remained in his job in El Paso until July 1919.

Arizona (1919–1921)
In July 1919 Wedge moved from El Paso to Tucson, Arizona to begin his studies at the University of Arizona. Initially Wedge worked as a switchman for the Southern Railroad for eight hours each night from midnight. By January 1920 Wedge was employed as a clerk at the Southern Railroad, and lived in a boarding house on East 13th Street, Tucson with his wife and son. After twelve months at the University, Wedge completed his course requirements and graduated in June 1920 with a Bachelor of Arts degree where he studied Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and the sciences. Wedge was able to speak six languages. In Spring 1921 Wedge's application for admission was accepted to the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, where he planned to earn a Ph.D. in social and educational psychology. To earn sufficient funds to study at Harvard, Wedge accepted the position as the principal of the Union High School in Benson, Arizona.

Harvard University (1922)
Wedge left Arizona to enroll in the Graduate School of Education of Harvard University on December 31, 1921 with only $10 and "rode the rails" in railroad boxcars for 2,000 miles, arriving in Cambridge, Massachusetts on January 16, 1922. However, soon after his arrival, Wedge was advised he would not be admitted to Harvard University. Harvard officials rescinded their offer of admission, probably due to the publicity surrounding his pugilistic past, indicating that "despite his degree that he was not scholastically equipped to enter for the degree of doctor of philosophy". Wedge fought to reclaim his place at Harvard, indicating he had renounced his "barbarian ways for the glory of Harvard", and promising that if admitted on probation for a year, he would study hard, and not publicize his past. On February 15, 1922, the Harvard authorities decided to admit Wedge for second semester. Wedge intended to specialize in psychology, and return to teach at the University of Arizona after graduation in 1925.

On March 13, 1922 Wedge appeared in District Court in Watertown, Massachusetts after being arrested for public intoxication late the previous evening in Mary's lunch room, but was released without penalty as a first offender. After an investigation by Harry W. Holmes, dean of the Graduate School of Education, Wedge was exonerated as it was discovered that he had been ill with the grippe and that his intoxication was due to taking a prescribed dose of medicine that was a mixture of quinine and whiskey. After several weeks in hospital, Wedge left Harvard for Arizona after April 27, 1922. Despite claims by Harvard authorities that he had left Harvard due to a recurrence of tuberculosis, Wedge admitted that he had left as he was missing his wife and son who were still living in Arizona, and that the weather was affecting him adversely. Later he acknowledged that lack of finances also compelled him to leave Harvard. Wedge planned to return to Harvard with his family in September 1922.

In June 1922 Wedge announced plans to produce a film of his life story, in which he would star, with all profits to be used to finance his return to Harvard.

California (1922–1923)
To earn funds to return to Harvard to complete his post-graduate studies, Wedge moved to Los Angeles, California by the beginning of July, 1922.

Congregational Church, Terminal Island (1922–1923)
At the beginning of July 1922 Wedge started the Los Angeles, Terminal Union Congregational church at Terminal Island "among the lumber yards and shipbuilding plants of Los Angeles Harbor". Wedge preached to the longshoremen each noon and on Sundays without any compensation. By 1923 Wedge had resigned as the pastor of the Congregational Church on Terminal Island.

In July 1922 Wedge joined the Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union 510 in San Pedro, California and became a longshoreman. While working as a longshoreman, Wedge joined the Industrial Workers of the World. During the April 1923 San Pedro strike, Wedge addressed about 2,000 strikers at the May Day rally organized by the IWW at Fourth and Beacon Streets, San Pedro. Wedge was one of 26 arrested when the police arrested San Pedro strikers on May 4, 1923, but was released from jail by May 14. Wedge, who was assaulted by a jail officer, became sympathetic to the cause of the IWW and its members. Wedge was eventually elected to the executive board of the IWW. Wedge later used his 15 months of experiences inside the IWW to fulfill his academic requirements and gather data for his thesis, and later to lecture on the IWW. Wedge's self-published book Inside the I.W.W. was published in 1924, with its profits helping meet the cost of further post-graduate studies.

Harvard University (1923–1924)
Later in 1923 Wedge returned to Harvard and spent twelve months in classes there. Wedge was commended by his Harvard professors for both his academic ability and application.

California (1924–1927)
By 1924 Wedge transferred to the University of California, Berkeley as a post-graduate student. While studying at UC Berkeley, Wedge and his family lived at the Kittredge Apartments in Berkeley. By August 1924 Wedge was a teaching fellow at UC Berkeley. Rather than accept the position of principal of a local high school, at the end of December 1924 Wedge announced his intention to become an evangelist. However, he subsequently joined the faculty at Redwood City High School.

At the end of December 1924 Wedge announced that after he completed his post-graduate studies at the University of California, that it was his intention to forgo his ambition to become a college professor to become an evangelist, hoping to succeed Billy Sunday, a former professional baseball player who was the best-known evangelist of the early 20th century.

On Sunday evening, May 2, 1926, Wedge preached on the subject "A Knock-out for the Devil" at the First Church of the Nazarene in Oakland, California.

Pasadena College (1926–1927)
By 1926 Wedge had been awarded a doctor of divinity degree and was recruited by H. Orton Wiley to be the dean of the college of liberal arts at the Church of the Nazarene's Pasadena College, where he was also professor of sociology and psychology.

Wedge resigned from Pasadena College in 1927 to enroll in a master's degree program at Columbia University in New York. Soon after his arrival in New York, Wedge's wife, Prudence, who had been diagnosed with cancer, had two major operations, and was sent to her sister Eunice's home in Freeport, Illinois to recuperate.

Nebraska (1927–1928)

Presbyterian Church, Monroe (1927)
In June 1927 it was announced that Wedge would become the pastor of the Presbyterian church in Monroe, Nebraska, having received 27 of 29 votes cast by the church members. Despite his son Hugh winning the A.A.U. Midwest Lightweight title victory in a boxing bout in Omaha, Nebraska on January 31, 1928, Wedge filed charges with the A.A.U. against the referee who officiated, alleging he allowed the opponent to foul Hugh repeatedly.

On Friday April 13, 1928, Wedge returned to the University of Nebraska and lectured on the Industrial Workers of the World, drawing on his fifteen months experience as a member.

As Prudence needed to move to California for her recovery, Wedge left Columbia University and traveled to California with his son to establish a home in preparation for her coming. Prudence died in Illinois in May 1928, and was buried in Oakland, California after a funeral conducted by her husband.

California (1928–1930)
Wedge returned to Berkeley, worked part-time as an undercover prohibition agent, and completed his post-graduate work at the University of California's Summer session in 1928.

While eschewing the use of alcohol, in 1928 Wedge campaigned for the repeal of the Volstead Act and Prohibition arguing they were ineffective, and that training of young people to make good decisions by their parents would be more effective. In November 1928 Wedge led an unsuccessful campaign to repeal California's 10-round boxing law.

First Presbyterian Church, Oakland (1928–1929)
By January 1929 Wedge was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at 2619 Broadway, Oakland, California.

On Friday, July 14, 1933, Hugh Wedge fought Jack Howard over three rounds in an exhibition bout at the Athens Athletic Club in Oakland, California. By September 1935 Hugh Wedge was a successful amateur boxer with aspirations to box as a middleweight in the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, after winning the Diamond Belt titles for simon-pures of Oregon, California, and Arizona. In February 1936 Hugh Wedge sparred with former heavyweight champion Max Baer in Oakland, as part of Baer's efforts to reclaim his title. A third round TKO defeat by Hugh McPhillips in the semi-finals of the Pacific 160-pound championship at the Dreamland auditorium in San Francisco, proved to be the end of Hugh Wedge's Olympic aspirations.

Nebraska (1945)
By April 1945 Wedge was the pastor of the Union Church in Monroe, Nebraska, and taught boxing to the local boys.

On April 24, 1945, Wedge and Guy Buckles fought for the fourth time in their careers, their first since 1913, a three-round exhibition bout in Monroe, Nebraska in a boxing carnival organized by Wedge, who was then pastor of the Union Church.

Personal life
Wedge married at least four times, and had one child, a son, Hugh Tracy Wedge.

Prudence Olive Tracy (1910–1928)

After a protracted friendship, a broken engagement and cancelled wedding plans, Wedge married Prudence Olive Tracy (born March 1872 in Ohio; died May 1928 in Freeport, Illinois), the postmistress of Florence, Nebraska, a northern suburb of Omaha, since 1895, a graduate of the University of Nebraska, choir singer and concert musician, and the third of the five children of Sarah E. Smalley (born October 1846 in Ohio; died September 2, 1889 in Ohio) and Jonathan Franklin Tracy (born about 1845 in Otway, Ohio), a Wisconsin physician. on December 18, 1910 in Florence, Nebraska. Prudence had previously been engaged, but broke off her engagement to the other man who had decided to migrate to Canada. Wedge and Prudence were soon engaged, and had announced their wedding date, but Prudence cancelled the wedding after a family friend brought to her mother's attention rumors that Wedge had not really reformed but was rather living an immoral life. In 1909 Wedge resigned from the pastorate and relocated to San Francisco to work as a missionary on the Barbary Coast. After their marriage, the Wedges moved to San Francisco.

Thirteen months later their only child, Hugh Tracy Wedge (born January 13, 1912 born in Genoa, Nebraska; died January 20, 1991 in Lake Havasu City, Arizona) was born.

Prudence was diagnosed with cancer, and had two major operations about 1927, and was sent to her sister Eunice's home in Freeport, Illinois to recuperate. As Prudence needed to move to California for her recovery, Wedge and Hugh worked their way to California to establish a home in preparation for her coming. However, Prudence died about May 15, 1928, just after Wedge and Hugh arrived at her bedside in Illinois. Prudence was buried in Oakland, California after a funeral conducted by her husband.

On August 20, 1928, Wedge, who was despondent due to the death of Prudence in May, his unemployment, and financial problems, was prevented from committing suicide in his apartment at 2261 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, by friends who had received his farewell letters. Wedge wrote a letter of resignation from the Presbyterian church where he held his minister's credentials so that he would not die as a clergyman. Wedge was committed to the psychiatric ward of the Highlands Hospital for several days of observation after a petition by his friend, Rev. Miles B. Davis, pastor of the First Congregational Church in Berkeley.

Jennie Mina Holliday (1929)
While studying at the University of California Summer session in 1928, Wedge met Jennie Mina Holliday, a fellow student, with whom he soon fell in love, and decided to marry after she had visited him several times when he was hospitalized after his August 1928 suicide attempt. However, his friend Dr. Lapsley Armstrong McAfee (March 31, 1864 in Ashley, Missouri – January 18, 1935 in Dumaguete, Philippine Islands), pastor of the Berkeley Presbyterian Church, refused to perform the ceremony, as it was incompatible with Presbyterian beliefs on divorce and remarriage. Rev. Chauncey David Norris, pastor of the Church of the Nazarene in Berkeley, California, agreed to perform the ceremony. However, after Wedge's denominational leaders protested his intention to marry Holloway, as she had been divorced on the grounds of incompatibility, Wedge decided to break his engagement to Holloway and cancel the wedding. Three hours before the wedding Wedge sent a special delivery letter to Holloway: "It is better for me to remain a lonely Presbyterian minister than to marry you and break God's law. The Bible is against our marriage. While your husband is still living I would be breaking God's law by living with you, even though the laws of California sanction it". However, within hours he reconsidered and announced his intention to resign as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, California and also from the Presbyterian denomination and to marry Holloway. The wedding was held in the evening of January 25, 1929, two hours later than scheduled, in Holloway's Oakland home, with Hugh Wedge as best man and Holloway's daughter, Mrs Jeanette Dale, the bridesmaid.

On the day after the wedding, Rev. Charles Smith, District Superintendent of the Northern California District of the Church of the Nazarene, contacted Norris and advised him that he had no right under Nazarene polity to conduct the wedding of a person who had divorced unless adultery was the grounds, and that he would "unfrock him for marrying a person divorced on grounds outside those recognized by the church". Norris was confident he would be exonerated after Nazarene authorities investigated the situation. On Monday, January 28, 1929, Norris met with Wedge in the bridal suite on the seventh floor of the Hotel Oakland, and quarreled about the wedding. Norris initially refused to file the paperwork for the wedding, as he claimed Wedge had lied to him about the marital status of Holloway, creating the impression that she was a widow. After Wedge threatened to file a mandamus suit against him, Norris filed the paperwork at the hall of records. Wedge indicated that: "To save his own ecclesiastical hide, Norris would like to get me out on a limb and then saw the limb off". Wedge insisted that even if the church did not recognize the legality of his wedding, that "we are married in the eyes of God and that is enough to satisfy me". Wedge also indicated that while he expected never to be given a pastorate again, that he had no intention of resigning from the church: "They may keep me from preaching, but they won't kick me out of the church". Wedge planned to train and manage his son, who was a promising amateur boxer, but on January 30, 1929, Hugh informed his father that he had decided not to sign a contract with him, and to remain in high school and then work in a foundry. After this argument with his son, Wedge indicated that he lost control and contemplated throwing himself out of his hotel window to spare his bride anymore humiliation.

Within a week of his wedding, Wedge had been committed to the psychiatric ward in the Highland Hospital in Oakland, California for observation after admitting to an alienist that he had been obsessed with either strangling his new wife or defenestrating her during their honeymoon. Wedge also confessed that "for several months I have been fighting a desire to kill myself. For weeks I would want to slash my throat every time I picked up a razor. Every time I looked out of a high window I wanted to jump out. I am a sick man and for my own protection and for the protection of my loved ones I want to be locked up and be placed where I can harm neither myself or anyone else". Wedge believed his condition was caused by damage caused by a frontal skull fracture sustained in a saloon fight about 1899, and exacerbated by the stress caused by the publicity surrounding his wedding and resignation from the church.

Jennie Wedge announced on 1 February 1929 that she would be seeking to have her marriage to Wedge annulled. She was reported as saying: "If he is mentally unbalanced I am sorry. But I could never live with him again. I would be in constant fear of my life. We had been so happy all week long until this sudden threat of his to kill me and then himself". On February 2, 1929 Jennie Wedge applied in the superior court to have her marriage to Wedge annulled on the basis of his "unsound mind" and his fraud, alleging that Wedge "falsely and fraudulently" represented that he had sufficient funds to provide for her immediate needs, whereas he had insufficient funds to pay the $100 bill for their honeymoon suite. Also on February 2, 1929 Wedge was charged with insanity at his own request, with the papers signed by his son, Hugh. On February 5, 1929 Wedge was declared insane and committed to the Napa State Hospital, "an insane asylum" in Napa, California.

Wedge's marriage to Holliday was annulled after June 1929.

After his father's committal, Hugh Wedge lived with relatives in Emeryville, California, where he attended Emeryville High School. After graduation in 1931, Hugh Wedge was accepted into the University of California, Berkeley, where he was part of the USC boxing team.

Viola M. Anderson (1930)
By the beginning of April 1930 Wedge was listed as being an unmarried author, and living in the Union Mission, a two-story frame building for indigent men, at 126 South Marengo Avenue, Pasadena. On April 15, 1930 The Los Angeles Times announced Wedge's intention to marry Viola M. Anderson (born about 1900 in Wisconsin), a stenographer residing in Montebello, California with her Swedish father.

Wedge lived in Berkeley, California until 1932, taught psychology at Pasadena College, and wrote several books, as well as filled the pulpit in several cities.

Matilda Trueds (1933)
On Tuesday, April 4, 1933, Wedge married divorcee Matilda Trueds, a traveler and writer from Sweden, in Seattle, Washington, in a ceremony conducted by his friend, Rev. Mark A. Matthews. Wedge was arrested on August 8, 1933, in the lobby of the Royal Hotel at Twentieth Street and San Pablo Avenue, Oakland, for being drunk and disturbing hotel patrons.

On September 16, 1933 Hugh married Marion Phyllis Hohl, a secretary, in Oakland, California.

Death
Wedge moved from Oakland, California to Napa, California and lived with his son, Hugh. Wedge died on March 3, 1953 in Napa.

Works
 The Fighting Parson of Barbary Coast. Columbus, Nebraska: Tribune Printing Company, 1912.
 "From Prize Ring to Doors of Harvard". Boston Globe (February 13, 1922).
 "On the San Pedro Slave Market".
 "Inside the IWW, by a Former Member and Official: A Study of the Behavior of the IWW, with Reference to Primary Causes" (1924).

References

1880 births
1953 deaths
Boxers from California
Industrial Workers of the World members
American Presbyterians
Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Omaha alumni
University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Harvard Graduate School of Education alumni
University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni
University of Arizona alumni
McCormick Theological Seminary alumni
American male boxers
People from Emeryville, California