Fred Rogers
Kindly Neighbor (1928 - 2003)

For those who knew and loved his television program for children, Mr. Rogers needs no introduction.  For those new to him, the best first meeting we can offer is through his own words about embracing everyone as his neighbor: "We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say `It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.' Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes."
- The Gratefulness Webteam

It was Fred Rogers’ maternal grandfather, Fred Brooks McFeely, who first said, “You’ve made this day a special day by just your being you, Freddy, and I like you just the way you are.”  Born in 1928 and growing up a chubby, shy, and lonely boy in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, young Fred cherished this unconditional acceptance from his grandfather, who helped give him confidence by allowing him to climb up and run along a high wall, against the protests of his mother and grandmother.  An only child until age 11, Fred often expressed himself through his fingers – by making up stories with hand puppets, and pounding out emotions on the piano.

As a music major in his final year of college preparing to go into the ministry, he returned home for Easter vacation and encountered his first television set.  He was disgusted.  This amazing new invention was being wasted on the nationwide broadcasting of people putting pies in each other’s faces.  Right then and there he changed his plans, and decided to work in television instead – to make something better of it.  His family was aghast, but Fred was determined.

In 1951, after graduating from Rollins College with a bachelor’s degree in music composition, Rogers went to New York to work for NBC.  Climbing the ladder from “gopher” to floor manager, he began acquiring the tools he would need by working for such programs as “The Kate Smith Hour” and “The Gabby Hayes Show”.  It was from Gabby that Fred learned to face the television cameras as though he were speaking to “just one little buckaroo.”

Amidst protests from those who thought he was throwing away a glamorous career, Rogers left NBC in 1953 to become one of the founding members of the U.S.A.’s first community-supported television station, WQED in Pittsburgh.  While working full time there, he belatedly answered his call to the ministry, and began attending seminary classes during his lunch hours and evenings after work.  At Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, he began studying child development under the expert guidance of Dr. Margaret McFarland, who remained his mentor until her death in 1987.

Rogers now had many tools under his belt, but was still unsure what shape his life’s work should take.  Dr. McFarland recalled that he was more in touch with his own childhood than anyone she’d ever met.  In fact, working with children was the catalyst which took all of the varied facets that made up Fred Rogers – music composer, creator of puppet characters, lover of whimsy, storyteller, television manager and performer, and even his spiritual self – and transformed them into the man who would become Mister Rogers.  In 1963 he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister to “work with children and families through the mass media.” 

After working behind the scenes on “The Children’s Corner” with Josie Carey, and a brief stint in Canada starring as himself in a 15 minute program called “MisteRogers”, he returned to Pittsburgh to start the now-famous “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”, which ran for 33 years.  Still in circulation today on America’s PBS and in countries around the world, the program speaks for itself – to anyone who is willing to “look and listen carefully,” as Mister Rogers would say.  It deals with things that weigh heavily on children’s hearts – not only fears of haircuts, going to school for the first time, or being sucked down the bathtub drain, but also more complicated issues such as divorce, death, war, and perhaps most important, how to deal with difficult people.

He wanted to create a place where children could be themselves, and so he made sure that each half-hour program included a 15-minute visit to “The Neighborhood of Make-Believe,” a world of the imagination where caring adult humans such as Lady Aberlin, Mr. McFeely the Speedy Delivery-man, Mayor Maggie, and Handyman Negri interact as equals with hand puppets such as the sassy Lady Elaine Fairchilde, pompous King Friday the Thirteenth, juvenile X the Owl, and shy Daniel Striped Tiger, who could each sometimes be the “difficult person.”  Unfailingly, each was treated with honesty and respect, and never excluded or given up on.  The characters’ feelings were talked about, and they learned to deal with their emotions in healthy ways.  Mister Rogers himself voiced these and many other puppets, and wrote each script meticulously to demonstrate that talking about difficult and awkward subjects actually helps make them easier to handle, and that each of us really is acceptable just the way we are.

But he knew that he couldn’t produce a program about accepting others unconditionally if he didn’t honestly live that way himself.  His widow, Joan, recalls that he worked especially hard at being “other-oriented,” rather than egocentric.  When she would come home and tell him she was angry with someone, he would wonder aloud what had been going on in that person’s day.  He knew that if we could somehow see life through their eyes, it would be much more difficult to remain angry with them, and that we could even learn to love them.  And he became so successful in this focus that he became known as a “tough interview,” simply because he was always more interested in finding out about the interviewers’ lives and families, even to the point of taking photographs of them.

Mister Rogers’ entire life became devoted to his neighbor – that is, whomever he happened to be with at the time.  Although his friends included the likes of Henri Nouwen, Yo-Yo Ma, and Levar Burton, he cherished everyday, ordinary people just as much – in fact, he saw no difference between the famous and the unknown.  Everybody fascinated him.  Children visiting the set of his program were given his complete attention, often to the frustration of his staff, who were trying to keep things running on schedule.  Early on he committed to personally answering every single letter he received – and how that mail increased over the years!  He lived this way outside the studio, as well.  Each person he encountered became, at that moment, the most important person on earth:

• Spotting a distracted child wielding a toy weapon in a crowded train station, Mister Rogers – whom the boy had never heard of – took time to kneel down amidst the whirlpool of adoring fans to assure the boy that he was strong inside, too.  The boy’s eyes lit up – it was just what he needed to hear.
• Koko the gorilla, famous for mastering sign language and “speaking” with her caretakers, felt his love so keenly that at their first meeting she immediately accepted him and embraced him warmly.
• A frustrated man who was talking to some people on the street saw him walking by, and asked him to tell the others that there is “only one way” to Heaven.  Mister Rogers, who practiced his deep faith daily with early-morning hymns, times of silence, and prayers for countless people, replied instead, “God loves you exactly the way you are.”

In another instance, a young man at an airport recognized him, and approached him to say so.  This was during the 1980’s, and the man, Marc Acito, was wearing legwarmers and a sweatshirt – with one shoulder intentionally exposed.  “Rogers took one look…and politely inquired as to whether I’d seen Torch Song Trilogy.  ‘I hear that Harvey Fierstein is awfully good,’ he said.”  Acito continues:

A couple of years later, my roommate, Lisa, got an internship on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," and she began a lifelong friendship with Rogers.

Lisa's most cherished memory is of a trip to Boston they made together for a concert...Upon arriving at the fancy home of a WGBH executive, the limo driver, Billy, turned to Rogers and asked when he should return to pick them up.

"Why, where are you going?" Rogers answered, and promptly invited Billy to join them for dinner - much to the bewilderment of the hostess.

On the way back to the hotel, Rogers sat in front, so he could find out more about Billy.  When he discovered they'd be passing Billy's house, Rogers suggested they stop in to meet Billy's parents.

"So there we all are," Lisa says, "getting out of a limo in the middle of West Roxbury, Massachusetts, to meet the driver's parents.  We walk in the door, and there's Billy's dad coming down the stairs in his bathrobe, a cigarette dangling from his lips.  He takes one look at Fred and yells, 'Holy (sheepdip)!  You're Mister Rogers!'"

"Then, suddenly it was like the whole neighborhood showed up," Lisa continues. "People brought cookies, and Fred was playing the piano - it was just magical."

Billy and his family never forgot that night (who could?), but apparently, Rogers didn't either.  A few years later, when he learned that Billy was dying of AIDS, he took time out from his vacation to call the hospital.

Think about it.  You're on your deathbed, and Mister Rogers calls to comfort you.  That, indeed, is a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

There are countless other such stories of his open and unguarded love for everyone he met.  And it is clear that his slow-placed, thoughtful love had – and continues to have – a profound impact on his viewers.  But Mister Rogers also changed television in at least two other significant ways.  He not only helped start public television, but helped save it as well: 

• In 1969 a $20,000,000 grant – which had been set aside for the future Corporation for Public Broadcasting – was about to be cut in half.  Mister Rogers, still largely unknown at that time, went before a congressional committee headed by the tough-minded Senator John Pastore (D-R.I.), and, with an honest and vulnerable six-minute plea to help give the children programming that would help them manage their angry feelings, melted the senator’s heart.  The $20,000,000 was approved.

On top of that, if it weren’t for him, we might never have had the VCR:

• In 1979, during the time VCRs first came out and were embroiled in the controversy of whether making private recordings from television constituted copyright infringement, Mister Rogers gave testimony favoring home recording, because he felt that parents should be able to show appropriate programs to their children at times that best fit each family’s schedule.  His words, which carried great weight, were later considered by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of home use.

And so this humble man, who has been the butt of so many jokes and parodies, really did change television as we know it.  Children who grew up watching him return to sit down now with their own children – and in some cases, grandchildren – to learn from him.  At the close of nearly each program, we hear him repeat the message he learned from his grandfather:  “You always make each day a special day.  You know how – by just your being you.  There’s only one person in the whole world like you, and that’s you yourself.  And people can like you – and your neighbor – exactly the way you are.”  We know these words are true because he lived them.  Although he went to heaven in 2003 – that’s how he would put it – his message continues not only through “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” but also through the love that reverberates and multiplies through the hearts and lives of those he touched.  And it is precisely this love that makes Fred Rogers a gift to us all.

Sincere thanks to author A.W. Hatano-Worrell.  Mr. Hatano-Worrell teaches English in Japan, is married with two children, and still watches Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood - with or without his kids.

Special thanks to Marc Acito for permission to use a portion of his commentary, "A Sad Day in the Neighborhood:  Mr. Rogers, Gay Men, and Me," originally found at lavendermagazine.com

Additional Resources
See: Fred Rogers, Life’s Journeys According to Mister Rogers
(New York Hyperion Press, 2005);
Mister Rogers' own website;
Wikipedia on Fred Rogers;
Tom Junod's essay, "Can You Say...Hero?"; and,
Alan Borsuk's article, "Everybody's Neighbor."

Video:
Mr. Rogers addresses the U.S. Senate
Mr. Rogers' goodbye speech
Mr. Rogers' Lifetime Achievement Award

For more information about Fred Rogers, see also:
"Fred Rogers, America's Favorite Neighbor" (VHS or DVD format), © 2003 by Fred Rogers’ company, Family Communications;
Mark Collins and Margaret Mary Kimmel, editors, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood:  Children, Television, and Fred Rogers(Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996).