The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers

by Maxwell King

By the time Junod had finished a long series of interviews with Rogers and everyone around him, he was ready to write the most positive profile he’d ever written about anyone—one of the most positive Esquire ever published. At the end of their time together, Junod concluded in a later interview: “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.”