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The vice president of CBS says Cronkite died Friday night with his family by his side at his Manhattan home.

Dubbed "the Most Trusted Man in America," Cronkite reassured the nation through scandal and tragedy at a time long before cable and Internet news.

He reported on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, Watergate, the moon landing, and the Iranian hostage crisis.

The CBS Evening News anchor was known affectionately as "Uncle Walter" and was known for his tagline, "and that's the way it is."

The term "anchor" was coined for him.

The CBS News "Early Show" was dedicated to him Saturday morning. Cronkite worked at the station from 1962 to 1981.

"Twenty-million people watched Walter Cronkite every night," said Harry Smith of "The Early Show." "That's more people than watch the three network broadcasts every night now combined. So he was a man who was a witness to history, but he also was a man who came into our living room every evening and did a rather remarkable job of delivering the news."

"He also wanted the truth," said CBS News Senior Vice President Linda Mason. "He also wanted it simple, complicated concepts could be made to be understood by the viewer. He didn't go for a lot of razzmatazz and effects, because we didn't do much in graphics in those days. He wanted it as it was. And that's what made him special. He was off air the way he appeared on the screen."

NYU Journalism Professor Mitchell Stephens says Cronkite's stature would be hard to match today.

"Cronkite is representative of an era that's passing in journalism, an era of networks, when the three broadcast networks controlled things," he said. "They no longer do."

Viewers said he had a huge impact on their lives.

"I always trusted what he said," said a New Yorker. "There was just an aura about him. You could tell underneath everything that he was a good person – and very credible."

"When he came on the news, he was the real thing," said another. " You really, you know, listened to what he had say. I think he portrayed the image of what a real anchor should be."

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are among the Americans honoring the legendary newsman. He says Cronkite calmly guided the country through wars, riots, marches and milestones.

"He cheered with every American when we went to the moon, boldly exploring a new frontier," said the president. "And he brought us all those stories large and small, which would come to define the 20th century. That's why we loved Walter, because in an era before blogs and email, cell phones and cable, he was the news."

The president says the country has lost an icon and a dear friend.

Clinton says she remembers Cronkite as a man of energy.

She says she and former President Bill Clinton got to know him in the early 1990s.

"It's a great time to look back and think about someone who played such a major role in explaining what was going on," Clinton said. "And did it in such a calm, fact-based way, without the embellishments that too often get in the way of really understanding what was going on."

Clinton says Cronkite took them sailing off the coast of Martha's Vineyard and gave them both solicited, and unsolicited advice that they've tried to live by.

The tributes to Cronkite continue to pour in, from colleagues and industry professionals, including the man who succeeded Cronkite as the anchor for the "CBS Evening News."

"He was literally a living legend and now a legend in memory," said anchor Dan Rather.

"As an American, he represented so much of the Cronkite era and what great journalism meant and continues to mean," said Christopher Callahan, dean of the Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona. "And for use here locally at Arizona State, he was our guiding light, he was our mentor."

Cronkite helped shape the curriculum of the journalism school that bears his name, on the campus of Arizona State University.

A private funeral will be held Thursday at St. Barts, where the family has attended since the 1950s. He will be buried next to his wife in Kansas City, Missouri.