Fred Rogers

I did a post on Fred Rogers last year, due to a book that I had read containing many of his quotes and songs that he had given and created for us to enjoy.  It’s no secret that I love this man.

At school, I do dictation all day, and this is composed of a variety of jury charges, depositions, and sometimes literary material read by our teachers in the morning.  And if we’re not in class being dictated to, we have tapes and a large file of recordings stored in Dropbox to write out on our machines.  All that’s well and good, but I admit, I get bored by all those.  So if I’m not on various podcasts or Khan Academy videos, I do some exploration on YouTube.

And last week, I scored big with YouTube.  I found a 9-part interview with Fred Rogers, all focused on his life.  Each segment was roughly a half-hour long, which makes four-and-a-half hours devoted to this man’s life.  It took me three days to get through because I only watched it during my afternoons in school.  That, and I could only sit and watch so much TV at that time.

There is not another person I know of who did more for the children of the world in the past century than Fred Rogers did.  I’m a product of that and I take real pride in it.  And now that I’m an adult, I’ve discovered that he is one the few men that I try to emulate… and I do a really bad job at it but I know what the standard is.

It was fascinating to learn how he got into the television industries.  His first time watching television, he saw a program of people throwing pies in each other’s faces and he felt it was such a waste of a valuable tool.  He realized that television had a real possibility for education and he immediately changed his goals and got a job at NBC.

He, of course, started at the bottom.  He was an assistant to somebody, which meant that he was usually getting coffee for everybody else.  On one occasion, he had gotten overwhelmed.  There was a rather large meeting of people with all their different orders for coffee.  One man took a sip of the coffee, turned to Mr. Rogers, and said, “I wanted milk, not sugar.”

Most of us would have been irritated by that.  I can’t count the number of backbiting conversations I’ve heard from employees that couldn’t stand their boss’s arrogance and/or whining.  Not Mr. Rogers.  He felt awful.  According to him, it had been his job to be sure that they got the right coffee, and though it was a little thing, he felt he had failed their trust in him.

That is the definition of selflessness.

There is a long and fun story of how he left NBC to go into educational programming, how Mr. Rogers Neighborhood cam to be, the creation of the puppets, and all that.  But there are two stories that captivated me more than anything.

One is about a woman driving on a highway.  She was a mother, depressed, and she had completely forgotten that her child was seated behind her.  During her drive she felt that life wasn’t worth living anymore, and as a semi-truck came up, she began veering towards the left to strike it when all of a sudden she heard the song, “It’s Such a Good Feeling to Know You’re Alive.”  She immediately turned back to the right, got help, and fourteen years later wrote to Mr. Rogers to let him know that his show saved her life.

The other story was one of the hardest things he had ever done.  His father passed away and one hour after the funeral, Mr. Rogers had to go do a live show that he could not get out of.  All these children had come to see him at this particular event, and three times, he had to come onto the stage and sing “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”  Can you imagine having to go to work so soon after your parent’s death?  And having to sing that song when the day certainly was not that beautiful for you?  And yet he did.

Since he passed away, there’s a huge void that hasn’t been filled in our society.  And the real pity?  He’s being forgotten.  A couple of years ago, I discovered that my youngest sisters have no idea who he is.  They’ve never seen his show, couldn’t pick his face out of a crowd, and certainly would not be familiar with his songs.  That stinks because I know they’re not the only ones.

But do yourself a favor: go to YouTube, type in for “Fred Rogers Interview” and watch all nine segments to learn about his life.  You will be a much better person for it and come to understand a little more about what true love is.