The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers

by Maxwell King

his belief in love, and his great sensitivity into a life course based not on fragility, but on a quiet strength. He found a way to be true to himself that enabled him to build a uniquely thoughtful set of defenses that relied on empathy and sympathy. Ultimately, he developed a powerful authenticity that propelled him to popularity in Latrobe.

Fred Rogers took profound stock of his feelings to find meaning, often spiritual meaning, that he could turn into understanding, and eventually into the sort of serious focus that could yield power. It was based on a profound conviction that what’s on the surface—the everyday pain and frustration and small joys of life—is not what is essential. The essential is to be found in depth and introspection, in searching for meaning, and then finding the truth that comes from that meaning.

He had gotten into television to make it better, to make it more appropriate and educational for young children. The slapstick, pie-in-the-face quality of early television was just what he wanted to change. Later in his career, he let his sense of humor come out more on air, especially when he wanted to show children that adults make mistakes, too.

And he always felt that actions—kindness, understanding, and openness in relationships—were more important than words.

Rogers found Orr, with his emphasis on kindness and caring and his deep belief in forgiveness, to be an example of how to live, and Fred decided to work hard to emulate his professor. When Rogers asked Orr what was the most important word in his theology, Orr replied that the word forgiveness was paramount because it alone could defeat the Devil.

Fred got such pleasure from listening to Orr, and watching him perform, that he used to come back to the seminary years after graduation to attend his old teacher’s lectures.17 Rogers offered a simple explanation: “You know how, when you find somebody who you know is in touch with the truth . . . you want to be in the presence of that person.”

As Fred Rogers himself often noted, what works best is a fine balance between flexibility, creativity, structure, and discipline. And the best discipline is not punishment, but teaching a child the art of self-discipline.

“Ultimately, it all sprang from his own childhood recollections and, I suppose, his sufferings as a child, even though he had good parents. He was extremely sensitive, and now it was his turn to help other children come through.”

“What I’ve come to appreciate more and more, the older I get, is the long-lasting effects of things that happen to us in childhood.”

“I really feel that [in] the opening reality of the program,” Fred explained in an interview, “we deal with the stuff that dreams are made of. And then in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, we deal with it as if it were a dream. And then when it comes back to me (at the end), we deal with a simple interpretation of the dream. . . . Anything can happen in make-believe, and we can talk about anything in reality. Margaret used to say, ‘Whatever is mentionable is manageable.’”

Fred Rogers’s instinct to use television, the most powerful popular culture tool of his time, to advance such a high-minded educational agenda was a stroke of pure genius. It provided a direct line to the rise of the early education movement in America and much of the rest of the world.

In the middle of the meal, a little boy appeared at the table, his head just below the tabletop at Fred’s side. Fred looked down. “My dog died,” said the boy, simply, and in an instant Rogers was kneeling on the floor with the boy talking about pets and death and a little child’s struggle to understand.

For his entire career, the connections Fred Rogers made with his television “neighbors” resulted in a torrent of fan mail. And he always answered, even if he needed help to handle the volume; he never wanted to miss a single chance to help a child learn.

“We can’t always know what’s behind a child’s question. But if we let a child know we respect the question, we’re letting that child know that we respect him or her. What a powerful way to say, ‘I care about you!’”

Mister Rogers took his viewers on this little journey to show that even in the face of death, things move ahead. That’s the essential message as he sits by the fish grave. Rogers never told grieving children that everything will be all right: no such simplistic reassurances. Instead he shared his feelings about death and loss, and the extraordinary truth, reaffirmed repeatedly throughout the program, that life does go on. Delivered by this Presbyterian minister-educator who was so childlike himself, his message brought poignancy far beyond the trite bromides usually served to little children.

Mister Rogers speaks directly into the camera to the little children who are quietly, intently watching: “It helps to say that you’re sad. Often it even helps to cry . . . let people know how you feel.” This is Rogers’s signature message: feelings are all right, whatever is mentionable is manageable, however confusing and scary life may become. Even with death and loss and pain, it’s okay to feel all of it, and then go on.

Margy Whitmer sums up the appeal of the man in the cardigan sweater: “It’s really quite simple: The man you saw on the show, that’s who he was. His respect and passion for children was real. . . . What he put out to the world was so important to us. It struck a real note in our hearts and our souls.

After Stamberg did seven of the programs, she came to appreciate Fred Rogers as much as her son did: “He can speak to our fears as he did with me on the telephone, and he can speak to our great joys, our apprehensions, our puzzlements, the things that we don’t understand.”

She marveled at how effectively Rogers’s puppets carried a childhood connection into their relationship with the program’s viewers: “In Fred’s hands, with love and gentleness, the puppets draw forth the underside of childhood. By ‘underside,’ I don’t mean macabre, warped, or seamy; they tap into the vein of fear, anger, and awkwardness, and unadulterated self-centeredness that lies beneath the sunny surface of childhood.

This was the Zen of Fred Rogers’s radical acceptance: There was no topic he wouldn’t address on air, no matter how difficult. “We don’t fudge things,” he said once when asked about the sources of the show’s popularity. “People long to be in touch with honesty.”

He never allowed advertising on the Neighborhood that targeted kids, for fear that young viewers couldn’t tell the difference between product pitches and the educational content of the show.

Whatever his personal foibles, Jim Rogers observes, his father had only one real touchstone: “Being who you are was so important to him that the only thing that would really upset him was phoniness. As long as I was being genuine and honest, he respected that.”

Junod was discovering the same thing everyone did: Fred Rogers was Mister Rogers—the identical, authentic person in every setting. And he treated everyone the same, from the president of PBS to the doorman at his apartment building in New York to the little girl who stopped him on the street to get his autograph. All were met with kindness, hospitality, and respect.

“People, I think, spoke of Fred as a childlike person. I don’t think so. I think that Fred was very, very grown up in that he protected that childlike aspect of him. He was obviously not an unsophisticated man by any stretch of the imagination, but I think there was a vulnerable side of Fred . . . that was always off to the side. It informed and empowered what Fred did, and the so-called childlike side of Fred’s personality that he allowed you to see sort of protected that other side of his personality.”

All his career, he emphasized the importance of listening; he felt that silence is a gift, as is what he called “graceful receiving.” He worried about the lack of silence in a noisy world, and pondered how those in the field of television could encourage reflection. Today these ideas may seem quaint, yet they can also be seen as radical and more pressing than ever.

He would study passages of interest from the Bible, and then he would visualize who he would be seeing that day, so that he would be prepared to be as caring and giving as he could be. Fred’s prayers in those early morning sessions were not for success or accomplishment, but rather for the goodness of heart to be the best person he could be in each of the encounters he would have that day.

Speaking about fame and fortune in an interview, Rogers once said: “How many clothes can you wear? How many cars can you drive? How big of a shelter do you really need? Some people get so caught up in the trappings of life, I feel they lose what is real.” A bit later, he added: “Deep and simple—that’s what matters.”

“These kids give you such hope,” said Rogers, reflecting on their visit. “Maybe they realize that you don’t have to be macho to be acceptable, and that everybody longs to be loved and feel that he or she is capable of loving. I would hope that is one of the major influences of the Neighborhood.”

Cox adds: “One word that characterizes Fred almost as much as anything, or more than anything, is that discipline, that sense of duty, that sense that, I will see this list of the people that I love every Christmas and every Easter. Nothing will keep me away from that.”

He came to the conclusion that he’d used his gifts to the best of his ability. And Fred decided that, imperfect though he knew himself to be, he really had done his best, and that God, to whom he had dedicated his life, would accept him into heaven.

Eliot Daley, Fred Rogers’s old friend and former executive at Small World Enterprises, says: “I would describe him as the ultimate ‘what you see is what you get,’ with one exception. What most people couldn’t see in Fred was his enormous power. Power. Capital P. Fred is the most powerful person I have ever known in my whole life. . . . I’ve dealt with a lot of people whom the world regards as powerful. None of them could hold a candle to Fred’s power. . . . “His power derived from a really unique place. It was his absolute self-possession, which is very different from self-interest or self-satisfaction, or selfishness. He didn’t need anything from you or from me. He welcomed it, but he didn’t need it.”

In a short video released by PBS a few months before Fred Rogers’s death, he says good-bye. Looking distinguished in a sharp suit and tie and glasses, he addresses his “television neighbors” directly, as he always does: “I would like to tell you what I often told you when you were much younger. I like you just the way you are. And what’s more, I’m so grateful to you for helping the children in your life to know that you’ll do everything you can to keep them safe. And to help them express their feelings in ways that will bring healing in many different neighborhoods. It’s such a good feeling to know that we’re lifelong friends.”

Historian and bestselling author David McCullough notes: “Mister Rogers was the greatest teacher of all times. He taught more students than anyone else in history.”

On one level, Fred is a gentle, reserved old man in a fading cardigan sweater whose principal contribution to society has been in the field of childcare. But on another level—and this is the level on which he is so often appreciated today—he is a powerful cultural avatar in an age that seems sick with rage and conflict.

Second, he provided, and continues to provide, exemplary moral leadership. Fred Rogers advanced humanistic values because of his belief in Christianity, but his spirituality was completely eclectic; he found merit in all faiths and philosophies. His signature value was human kindness; he lived it and he preached it, to children, to their parents, to their teachers, to all of us everywhere who could take the time to listen.

As Fred Rogers summed it up: “Childhood is not just clowns and balloons. In fact, childhood goes to the very heart of who we all become.”