When I first moved to New York, I toiled as a writer in CBS News Radio. In those days, the place was a forest of redwoods, with towering giants like Douglas Edwards, Reid Collins, Charles Osgood, and Christopher Glenn. A short time ago, we got word that one of those giants has fallen. Christopher Glenn passed away at the too-young age of 68.

One of my earliest memories of news is the voice of Christopher Glenn, summarizing the week's events on the Saturday morning TV show In the News. He was the voice of space launches, and hourly news reports, and The World Tonight, and The World News Roundup. He had a voice that mingled cognac and cigarette smoke -- he was an inveterate, ceaseless smoker -- and both Chris and that famous voice seemed ageless. More than that voice, he had a gift for words, and a way of weaving a story that made it real and immediate. He ventured into television a few times, but he always returned to radio. It was where he belonged, in the "theater of the mind."

I was there when Douglas Edwards retired, and passed the baton to Chris Glenn, who took over The World Tonight from him in the late '80s. And I was there earlier this year when Chris himself retired. You had the sense then that an era was ending. It was. And it has.

So many of the redwoods are gone.