Profiles in Character: Fred Rogers, A Caring Neighbor to America’s Young Children

In 1985, Elizabeth Usher was a five-year-old having 100 seizures a day. Her only seizure-free respite came as she watched Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood each day from her bed.  As she awaited dangerous brain surgery at Johns Hopkins University, her mother called WQED, the Pittsburg station on which Fred Rogers appeared. While she hoped for a letter to her child, Mister Rogers instead called.  For an hour, he listened to Elizabeth share her fears and comforted her. After surgery she lay in a coma, but Rogers called each day to ask about her. Then he asked to visit.  Told she was still in a coma, he came anyway along with three favorite puppets from the show which he left at her bedside.  For the next several years he would call from time to time, maintaining the connection so important to her.  Reflecting on this in 2020, she wrote: “What helped me most as I grew older and stronger were his words to me, “I like you just the way you are.”   

Fred Rogers helped shaped millions of young children’s lives from his earliest educational television show The Children’s Corner to 33 years of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, from 1969-2001.  The secret to his success was his deep understanding of children’s emotional needs and a passionate commitment to tell them they were heard, respected and loved.  When he sang “Won’t you be my neighbor,” at the start of each show it was his invitation to form that special bond.

His childhood laid the seeds for success.  He had asthma, was chubby, kids called him “Fat Freddy” and chased him home from school. He found comfort in his parents’ love, reading, creating tunes on his piano and playing with a puppet theater he created in his attic. His generosity of spirit was instilled especially by his mother, known for helping poor families in their hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania and for knitting sweaters for soldiers during World War I.  The cardigans he wore on Neighborhood were gifts from her.

Fred Rogers didn’t seek stardom.  “You don’t set out to be rich and famous; you set out to be helpful.”  He lived simply, produced shows on a small budget and disdained wealth by refusing to sell products to kids or allow ads on his show.  Young children he believed could not differentiate between what was in an ad and what was on the show.

He was a deeply religious Presbyterian. While producing The Children’s Corner, he spent half days over eight years to become an ordained minister.  Expected to enter a church and preach, he argued successfully instead that he would minister to children though television.

He wrote nearly nine hundred programs along with two hundred songs and thirteen operas. He played piano, sang many of the songs and played most of the major puppet roles as well being the on-camera host. Getting language right mattered deeply. As he noted, a child hearing a pet was “put to sleep” might fear going to bed at night.  For this reason, every script was reviewed extensively and often sent to Dr. Margaret McFarland at her Pittsburgh-based Arsenal Family & Children’s Center where he had learned from her about child development.

While many children’s shows at the time focused on fast-moving talk and action, Rogers prized being calm and slow.  His focus was on the social and emotional development of children.  He wanted them to learn it was OK to express fears, believing they could thus learn to manage them.  His shows dealt with everyday topics but difficult onestoo, like divorce, sickness and violence. 

Sometimes accused of not focusing enough on discipline, Rogers said learning self-discipline was more important than having it imposed by adults.  Accused of not focusing on cognitive skills, he said: “It’s easy to convince people that children need to learn the alphabet and numbers,” but “what matters even more … is how a person’s inner life finally puts together the alphabet and numbers of his outer life . . . whether he uses the alphabet for the declaration of war or the description of a sunrise – his numbers for the final count at Buchenwald or the specifications of a brand-new bridge.”

On May 1, 1969 Rogers testified in support of a critical $20 million of funding for PBS in front of skeptical Sen. John Pastore’s subcommittee. Speaking about his work, he said:

“I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique.  I end the program by saying, “You’ve made this day a special day, by just being you.  There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.” And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health. I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger . . . than showing something of gunfire.”

Pastore’s response: “Looks like you just earned the 20 million dollars.”

“Childhood is not just about clowns and balloons,” Rogers once said.  “In fact, childhood goes to the very heart of who we all become.”

Photo Credit: commons.wikimedia.org

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