It was extremely hot and humid—the hottest time of the year, immediately prior to the coming of the rainy season. We were standing under the tree talking, desperate for some shade.

The location was a small farm just outside Accra, the capital of Ghana. The subsistence farmer and his wife were present as well as a visitor from the United States and me.

It was the farmer who spoke.

"I was shocked," he said, "to hear that Alistair Cooke had died. We will miss him greatly."

At 95, Alistair Cooke still presented a weekly 15-minute radio program Letter From America. It was the longest running radio program in history—it began in 1946 and continued until the end of March this year, less than a month before his death. Broadcast around the world on the BBC World Service, Mr. Cooke's voice was familiar to hundreds of millions. More importantly, he helped the world understand America.

At a time when America is increasingly misunderstood and frequently the odd man out in world affairs, Alistair Cooke is needed now more than ever.

The British newsmagazine The Economist had a full-page obituary of Mr. Cooke in their issue of April 3. The obituary began with the following words: "For as long as anyone can remember, Alistair Cooke was the perfect embodiment of the special relationship... For more than half a century he formed a solid, though urbane, one-man bridge between the two cultures," referring to Britain, where he was born, and America where he lived from the time of the Great Depression until his death.

He had actually gone to the United States to be a drama critic, but soon discovered that America itself was "far more gripping and dramatic than anything I had ever seen" (ibid.). Becoming a U.S. citizen in 1941 and starting his weekly radio broadcast immediately after World War II, Mr. Cooke's experience of America and his coverage of it to the world coincided with America's period of global preeminence.

The Economist's article ends with a sobering reference to rising concerns in the United Kingdom about U.S. foreign policy and especially the conduct of the Iraqi war: "At Mr. Cooke's death, the special relationship had never needed him more."