In the summer of 1970, when Walter Cronkite was firmly entrenched as “the most trusted man in America,” he was unable to attend the 50th birthday celebration for his close friend, war historian Cornelius Ryan, at the ‘21’ Club in New York City.  Instead, Mr. Cronkite sent a gift, a seemingly unremarkable five-by-five inch slab of porcelain.  “Dear Connie,” the broadcaster wrote to Mr. Ryan, author of “A Bridge Too Far.” “You are now the possessor—proud, I hope—of a piece of Hitler’s urinal.”  But, at least in this matter of Hitler’s purported toilet, can the late Mr. Cronkite be trusted? Or was the newsman, known to appreciate a joke, perhaps just enjoying a bit of comic relief with an old friend?  Mr. Cronkite’s letter, as well as the alleged shard of Adolf Hitler’s lavatory, was recently on display at Ohio University’s Kennedy Museum of Art in Athens, Ohio, in an exhibit exploring how “influence shapes the perception of value.”  “My first reaction was, ‘Oh, God, I don’t want to have anything to do with that,’ ” said Jessica Kunkler, 34 years old, a graduate student who helped curate the display. But as she discussed the item with her classmates and teachers, she began to see its promise.  “We started talking about why we value this object we don’t know anything about,” she said. Many viewers simply assume the piece is authentic because of its connection to Mr. Cronkite, she observed, a testament to “how much influence people can have in the world.”  Most other pieces in the exhibit, such as scrips from a 19th-century coal town—demonstrating how any article can have currency value if sanctioned by authorities—were contributed by students and local residents.  But the alleged artifact from Hitler’s bathroom was the No. 1 attraction, says Edward Pauley, the museum’s director. More than 5,000 visitors explored the exhibit, a turnout Mr. Pauley called “exceptional” when compared with recent years. “People were astounded,” he said, “wondering why it was on display, which was exactly the intent of the exhibit.” The piece is part of a permanent collection managed by the university’s library.  The exhibit’s organizers didn’t authenticate the shard’s origins, opting to let visitors reach their own conclusions. Mr. Cronkite, in his letter, made a tongue-in-cheek case for its significance.  “As far as I know, there do not exist any other fragments of this distinctive place in the history of our times,” he wrote to Mr. Ryan. “It seems appropriate that this memento of perhaps the only happy moments the Fuehrer spent in his declining days should reside with you, one of the great historians of that great war.”  Messrs. Cronkite and Ryan met as young war correspondents in 1943—one a Yankee wires reporter for United Press, the other an Irish upstart at the Daily Telegraph—clanking beers and swapping stories in taverns lining London’s Fleet Street. The men remained friends for three decades.  Mr. Ryan rose to prominence with the 1959 release of his World War II book, “The Longest Day,” an account of the D-Day landings at Normandy. Considered one of the first forays into narrative nonfiction, the book sold more than 25 million copies, according to Michael Shapiro, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. The author’s last work, “A Bridge Too Far,” became a 1977 movie starring Michael Caine, Sean Connery and Robert Redford.  Mr. Cronkite, meanwhile, went on to become the longtime anchor of the “CBS Evening News.” At the time of his retirement in 1981, he was the equivalent of “God, mother, the American flag, the four-minute mile, and Mount Everest” in the eyes of his audience, according to historian Douglas Brinkley, who published a 2012 biography of the newsman.  He was also not above a bit of bathroom humor. During the early days of the war, he was part of a three-man jazz group called the Latrios, named after the latrines where the band practiced, said Mr. Brinkley.  After the war, Mr. Cronkite toured Europe to chronicle its toll. According to his letter, he recovered the lavatory slab on a visit to Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s private bunker on the Eastern Front. “There were American guards all around, but I sneaked it into my bag,” he later said.  Before sending it to Mr. Ryan, Mr. Cronkite affixed the souvenir to a crest-shaped block of walnut wood. At the bottom, he attached a metal plaque, inscribed: “Hitler Stood Here.”  The gift was “quintessential Cronkite,” says Mr. Brinkley, who added that he doesn’t know if the artifact is authentic. The anchorman, who died in 2009, had “a robust sense of humor and a deep hatred of all things Hitler.”  Mr. Cronkite’s personal papers are housed at the University of Texas at Austin’s Briscoe Center under executive director Don Carleton, who helped the newsman dictate his 1996 memoir, “A Reporter’s Life.”  In all their conversations, Mr. Carleton said, the famed broadcaster never mentioned visiting Hitler’s headquarters, let alone pocketing a slab of the dictator’s urinal. “It would be very much the way Walter was to pull a joke like that. He could tell jokes like crazy and loved that kind of stuff.”  After Mr. Ryan’s death in 1974, his wife passed along the bulk of his belongings—including his personal library, manuscripts, letters and Hitler’s supposed urinal—to the archives at Ohio University.  In a 2004 interview, Mr. Cronkite said he once asked Mr. Ryan about the gift, and was disappointed by the flat reception. “He said it was just a broken piece of plaster,” Mr. Cronkite recalled, acknowledging his friend didn’t quite know what to make of it.  With the exhibit complete, the slab has returned to the permanent collection managed by the university library. Visitors can ask to hold it for themselves, a hands-on approach that curator Douglas McCabe believes is the best way to engage with history’s most interesting relics.  His only rule: No scraping it with fingernails.  “Can’t have anyone picking up DNA and going ‘The Boys from Brazil’ on me,” he chuckles. The 1978 film, based on the book of the same name, stars Gregory Peck as a crazed scientist who clones the deceased Nazi leader.  Write to Daniel Huang at dan.huang@wsj.com  Corrections & Amplifications: In 1943, Mr. Cronkite was a wires reporter for United Press. An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the organization as United Press International, which formed in 1958 when United Press merged with another newswire service. (Oct. 6, 2015)
Famed newsman Walter Cronkite once gave a friend an unusual birthday present: a shard of porcelain he said came from Hitler’s urinal. The piece is part of an Ohio University collection.