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Thu 27 Feb, 2003 04:06 am
Host of 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' dies at 74
PITTSBURGH (AP) ?- Fred Rogers, who gently invited millions of children to be his neighbor as host of the public television show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for more than 30 years, has died of cancer. He was 74.
From 1968 to 2000, Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister, produced the show at Pittsburgh public television station WQED. The final new episode, which was taped in December 2000, aired in August 2001, though PBS affiliates continued to air back episodes.
Rogers, who died Thursday morning, composed his own songs for the show and began each episode in a set made to look like a comfortable living room, singing "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood," as he donned sneakers and a zip-up cardigan.
His message remained a simple one throughout the years, telling his viewers to love themselves and others. On each show, he would take his audience on a magical trolley ride into the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, where his puppet creations would interact with each other and adults.
Rogers did much of the puppet work and voices himself.
The series remained popular through the years, including with children of baby boomers who watched the show growing up. Its ratings peaked in 1985-86 when approximately 8% of all U.S. households with televisions tuned in. By the 1999-2000 season, viewership had dropped to about 2.7%, or 3.6 million people.
One of Rogers' red sweaters hangs in the Smithsonian Institution.
As other children's programming opted for slick action cartoons, Rogers stayed the same and stuck to his message.
"It looks like nothing much happens," Hedda Sharapan, an associate producer with the show, said in 2001. "Listening has been one of the main focus points."
Rogers was born in Latrobe. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1962 with a charge to continue his work with children and families through television.
He studied early childhood development at the University of Pittsburgh's graduate school and consulted for decades with the late Dr. Margaret McFarland, an eminent child development expert at the university. The show examined the tribulations of childhood, including anger, fear, even a visit to the dentist.
At a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the show in 1993, Rogers said, "It's not the honors and not the titles and not the power that is of ultimate importance. It's what resides inside."
Off the set, Rogers was much like his television persona. He swam daily, read voraciously and listened to Beethoven. He once volunteered at a state prison in Pittsburgh and helped set up a playroom there for children visiting their parents.
Rogers was an unseen puppeteer in The Children's Corner, a local show he and Josie Carey launched at WQED in 1954. In seven years of unscripted, live television on the show, he developed many of the puppets used in "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," including King Friday XIII, Daniel Striped Tiger and Curious X the Owl.
Rogers accepted an offer to develop his own 15-minute show in Canada. He brought the show, called Misterogers, back to Pittsburgh and in February 1968 began its public broadcasting debut.
Rogers' gentle manner was the butt of some comedian's jokes. Eddie Murphy parodied him on Saturday Night Live in the 80's with his Mister Robinson's Neighborhood, a routine Rogers found funny and affectionate.
Rogers is survived by his wife, Joanne, a concert pianist; two sons, John, who lives in Kansas, and Jim of Pittsburgh; two grandsons, Alexander and Douglas; and a sister, Elaine Crozier of Latrobe.
I'm so sorry to hear that, but thanks bumblebee for posting it.
It's a sad, sad day in the neighborhood.
Softened by Time's consummate plush,
How sleek the woe appears
That threatened childhood's citadel
And undermined the years.
Bisected now, by bleaker griefs,
We envy the despair
That devastated childhood's realm,
So easy to repair.
(Emily Dickinson #1738 )
********************************
Maybe it's more appropriate to post Mr. Roger's familiar theme song:
It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?...
It's a neighborly day in this beauty wood,
A neighborly day for a beauty.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?...
I've always wanted to have a neighbor just like you.
I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.
So, let's make the most of this beautiful day.
Since we're together we might as well say:
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won't you be my neighbor?
Won't you please,
Won't you please?
Please won't you be my neighbor?
click below to hear Mr. Roger's theme song:
http://pbskids.org/rogers/songlist/song1.htm
I was sad to hear about this on the radio on the way to work this morning. He modelled a gentle way to be, which is not something you see on any other media today.
Dream
If there's one word that best characterizes Fred Rogers it was precisely that: gentle.
He gently touched many hearts.
Yes, jjorge. On my way to my second school today, there was another piece about Mr. Rogers. Apparently one of his zippered sweaters is on display at the Smithsonian.
His was one of two TV shows I was allowed to watch while growing up, (the other being "Sesame Street"), and the sozlet has just started getting in to it. One of the first things I thought when he retired was, "He's dying." It just seemed like he loved doing the show so much, and that he'd want to manage his exit in that way, rather than abruptly falling off the radar and having kids need to deal with that. So he made his farewell show, and stuck around IRL for a while after that -- announcements on PBS, guest spots on "Arthur" -- and then felt ready (I really believe) to pass on.
Sad.
I watched that show everyday. I was just looking at another forum and some people on their describe how their parents were divorcing or they were in foster homes and were so glad to be able to watch Mr. Rogers because he was one of the only happy caring adults of their childhoods.
There will never be another like him. Hoping my future children will at least be able to see reruns.
In the words of Henrietta Pussycat - meow meow goodbye friend meow meow
An excellent life's work. Bye, Mr. Rogers...
How very sad, he was such an influential part of my growing up...yes, the gentle neighbor.
Lovely that one of his sweaters is in the Smithsonian, it certainly belongs there.
I watched MRN growing up as well, but had forgotton about the puppet part of the show...
I like peanut butter because of his trip to a peanut butter factory!
Lorna
He taught me that you could eat cheese and banana together. I was about 15 at the time, but, still, I appreciate knowing it.
The factory stuff rocks! We just saw one on how they make toilets. It was riveting!
I'm serious!
I've seen that one. (Here I'm betraying how much Mr. Rogers I've watched as an adult, I think. That and the Muppet Show...)
Also like the one where he went to see how reed instruments were made. That and the peanut butter are the ones I remember.
Lorna...
From today's New York Times:
February 28, 2003
A Friend in the Neighborhood
By DAVY ROTHBART
NN ARBOR, Mich. ?- When I was 3 years old and my older brother was 6, he wrote a letter to Mr. Rogers. Thrillingly, Mr. Rogers wrote back. They began a little correspondence, and the next summer, when my brother told Mr. Rogers that our family was headed to Massachusetts for a week's vacation, Mr. Rogers invited all of us to chill with him for a day at his summer home on Nantucket.
We had a glorious time. Mr. Rogers sang songs to us, played with us in the sand and told us stories about our friends from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. It was a day I have never stopped glowing about.
Twenty years later, in 2001, I went to see Mr. Rogers again. I was working on a story about neighbors fighting, and it felt appropriate to ask for insights from my all-time favorite neighbor. My idea was to play tapes for Mr. Rogers of people in my neighborhood in Chicago and see if I could get him to mediate some real-life disputes.
I was skeptical that it would work out. It's one thing to know how to change your shoes and feed the goldfish; it's something else to deal with, say, the tensions and complexities of gentrification. We met at the TV studio in Pittsburgh where Mr. Rogers filmed his shows. He welcomed me beaming, a spry and slender old man.
"Last time I saw you, you could pick me up in your arms," I said. "I doubt you could do that now."
"Well hey, we could try!" he said, laughing.
We talked for hours. He was kid-like and curious, an utterly engaged listener, more interested in the details of my life than in talking about his own. He broke out hand puppets ?- King Friday, Daniel Striped Tiger, X the Owl. It was both eerie and dazzling to see him carry on conversations with them, slipping effortlessly among their voices and his own.
I told him about my upstairs neighbor, who hated my loud music and always banged on her floor with a broom to get me to turn it down. Mr. Rogers said, "I will always uphold a person's right to silence." He said he'd been staying at a motel recently and the traffic outside his window was so loud that he'd gathered some pillows and slept in the closet.
"That's what I should suggest to my neighbor," I said.
Mr. Rogers laughed. But then he suggested I talk to the woman upstairs. "It's so easy to condemn when we don't know," he said. If he had a dispute like that with his neighbor, he said, "I would hope I would be brave enough to visit."
In my neighborhood, I told Mr. Rogers, everyone seemed to fear each other. The people moving in feared the people already there, and vice versa, and everyone feared the teenagers who cruised up and down the boulevard. We listened to some of the tapes I'd brought. "The worst thing is, people seem afraid to talk to each other," I said. I wanted to know why.
Mr. Rogers sat quietly for 15 full seconds. "Perhaps we think that we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that there are some people in this world who I can't ever communicate with, and so I'll just give up before I try. And how sad it is to think that we would give up on any other creature who's just like us." His eyes seemed to be watering.
When the interview was over Mr. Rogers gave me a ride back to my hotel. We got in his car and edged out of the parking lot. The road was packed with rush-hour traffic. Mr. Rogers tapped on his left blinker and we sat there for a few minutes, waiting for a chance to pull out.
"It's always hard to turn left out of here," he said, though he showed no signs of impatience.
I wondered if Mr. Rogers, who died yesterday, was one of those unflappable saint-like types. I asked him: Don't you ever just get frustrated?
He smiled. "Sure. Sometimes. Sometimes I do. Don't you?"
Davy Rothbart, publisher of Found magazine, is a contributor to the radio program "This American Life."
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