Cherished TV neighbor' Fred Rogers dies at 74
Mr. Rogers died early yesterday at his Pittsburgh home after a brief bout with stomach cancer.
Produced from 1969 to 2001 and still on the air in reruns on more than 300 Public Broadcasting Service stations, "Mister Rogers" is public television's longest-running program.
Mr. Rogers understood how powerfully intimate television could be. He talked directly to the camera and eschewed the whiz-bang of animation and fast cuts for a pace so deliberate that it allowed for moments of silence — unthinkable nearly anywhere else on the tube.
He stuck to a small cast, the same few, simple sets, and an unwavering message of love and respect for children's innermost thoughts.
"He made a mass medium personal," said David Kleeman, executive director of the American Center for Children and Media in Des Plaines, Ill. "He had a way of talking to the camera as though there was just one child there. And he made every child feel he was speaking directly to them."
"Our goal," Mr. Rogers once told Newsweek magazine, "is to confront children with what bothers them. It is good to re-evoke their fears and teach them to deal with them. That's why children are held by the program. ... (I)t deals with their inner dramas."
Mr. Rogers' achievements were recognized with two Peabody Awards, four Emmys, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
An ordained Presbyterian minister, Mr. Rogers made television his pulpit and pint-sized viewers and their parents his congregation. He preached many messages, but the overriding one had to do with self-worth, a lesson he learned from his beloved grandfather.
Fred McFeely Rogers was born in the small industrial town of Latrobe in western Pennsylvania. He was a sickly, overweight child with a very protective mother who did not like him to play outside by himself and once made him spend an entire summer inside an air-conditioned room because of his hay fever. His father prospered as president of the McFeely Brick Co., one of Latrobe's largest businesses.
Growing up in an era when good children were seen and not heard, Mr. Rogers said he was expected to be perfect. An only child until he was 11, when his parents adopted a baby girl, he spent many hours alone, often working out anxieties and frustrations by playing with puppets. He also immersed himself in music, tinkling on a toy piano and later on an electric organ. He began to compose and eventually had more than 150 songs to his credit.
He spent winters in Florida with his grandfather, Fred Brooks McFeely, after whom he was named (and after whom Mr. Rogers named a character on his show). An entrepreneur, McFeely tried to imbue his grandson with his can-do spirit, teaching him how to ride a horse and freeing him to try things he might not ordinarily have been allowed to do, such as climb a wall.
"I climbed that wall. And then I ran on it. I will never forget that day," Mr. Rogers recalled many years later. His grandfather modeled the trusting, patient behavior that became a hallmark of Mister Rogers.
His signature line — "I like you just the way you are" — was taken nearly verbatim from Grandfather McFeely.
"I think it was when I was leaving one time to go home after our time together that my grandfather said to me, 'You know, you made this day a really special day. Just by being yourself. There's only one person in the world like you. And I happen to like you just the way you are.'
"That just went right into my heart. And it never budged," he told writer Jeanne Marie Laskas in "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Children, Television, and Fred Rogers," a collection of essays published in 1996.
After graduating from Latrobe High School, where he was student council president and editor of the newspaper, he entered Dartmouth College as a Romance-language major. He later transferred to Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., to study music composition.
He planned to study for the ministry after graduating from Rollins but changed his mind after seeing some children's shows on television. Their quality appalled him.
In 1951, after finishing magna cum laude at Rollins, he was hired by NBC in New York as an assistant producer of the "Voice of Firestone" and the "NBC Television Opera." He later became floor director of "Your Lucky Strike Hit Parade" and the "Kate Smith Hour."
In 1953 he made a decision that astounded his NBC colleagues: He was quitting the network for a job back in Pittsburgh to launch WQED, the first community-sponsored public television station.
"The people at NBC said, 'You're out of your mind! That place isn't even on the air yet!' " Mr. Rogers recalled to Laskas. "And I said, 'Well, something tells me that's what I'm supposed to do.' And that was it."
Within a year, he was writing and producing the hourlong "Children's Corner" in partnership with his friend, Josie Carey, the show's host. Mr. Rogers remained behind the camera to work a handful of homely puppets — from boastful King Friday and troublesome Lady Elaine to timid Daniel Tiger, the same ones that would inhabit his later show.
He also was enrolled at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and studying child psychology at Pittsburgh's Arsenal Family and Children Center, founded by Benjamin Spock and Erik Erikson. At Arsenal he met Margaret McFarland, a child psychologist whose ideas about the inner life of children and the importance of being genuine would influence him profoundly.
Mr. Rogers was ordained by the United Presbyterian Church in 1963 and charged with the mission of using the media to help families and children. The result finally put Mr. Rogers in front of the camera, molding a 15-minute daily program for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Called "Misterogers," it was picked up in Pittsburgh in 1964; the following year, the Eastern Educational Network bought 100 shows.
When production money ran out, cancellation loomed, stirring an audience revolt that attracted the attention of a new benefactor. The Sears, Roebuck Foundation granted Mr. Rogers $150,000, as did National Educational Television. A new series, "Misterogers' Neighborhood," was born.
When Sears agreed to finance a half-hour version of the program for public television in America, the show became "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."
After the program debuted on Feb. 19, 1968, Mr. Rogers was a celebrity. The kudos streamed in — and never stopped. "There is no one else doing what Rogers does," George Gerbner, emeritus dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, said in 1992. "He treats children as human beings. It's a shame that he's the only one."
The show barely changed over the years. Music, soothing and improvisational, was an important element. The opening chords of the show, written by longtime music director Johnny Costa, were inspired by Beethoven's Sonata in C Major.
Each show was structured like a musical composition, too. The overture was Mr. Rogers coming through the door, exchanging his sport coat for a sweater and changing into comfortable shoes. All the while, he was singing:
"It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won't you be my neighbor?"
The exposition was Mr. Rogers explaining the themes of the day, such as what makes a person unique or why it's OK to miss loved ones. He developed the theme through visits from friends, such as Mr. McFeely the Speedy Delivery man, and through the mini-dramas that his puppets played out. An old-fashioned toy trolley took the viewer from Mr. Rogers' living room into the fantasy world, symbolizing an inner journey that analysts said gave his show so much value.
Every segment addressed children's feelings and developmental milestones. Mr. Rogers showed how a violin was made and how mushrooms grew, but he also brought in Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch in "The Wizard of Oz," to explain how the witch was just an act and not something to really fear. He demonstrated that getting a haircut is not awful, and that you can't get sucked down the bathtub drain. No concern was too trivial.
"One of the greatest gifts you can give anybody is the gift of your honest self," he said. "I'm like you see me on the 'Neighborhood.' "
Mr. Rogers is survived by his wife, Joanne; sons James and John; and two grandsons.