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Nothing Personal
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By Joyce Millman

August 10, 1999 | For the past 30 years, it has been a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Fred Rogers steps up onto the porch, opens the door and beams a wide, welcoming smile, as if we light up his life. He changes from his suit jacket to his zippered cardigan sweater, from his leather slip-ons to his navy blue canvas boat shoes, and sings, "Would you be mine, could you be mine, won't you be my neighbor?"

Outside Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, there has been Vietnam and Watergate, Chernobyl and Challenger, Ethiopian famine and ethnic cleansing, Oklahoma City and Littleton, Polly Klaas and JonBenet Ramsey. But inside, there is peace and calm, familiarity and safety. Troubling feelings and fears are gently explored. Reassurance is given. "The whole idea," Fred Rogers recently told Jeff Greenfield in a CNN interview, "is to look at the television camera and present as much love as you possibly could to a person who might feel that he or she needs it."

Love. Is it that simple? Mister Rogers thinks so. Yet many children go wanting. So Rogers has dedicated his life -- not just his career -- to making children's programming with love. Consistent, patient, respectful and pleasingly repetitive, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" is the longest-running show on PBS, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Rogers has resisted merchandising, razzle-dazzle, fads (though he did break dance once on the show) and technological flash (it took until 1999 for Rogers to agree to put up a "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" Web site), reasoning that children's basic needs don't change with the decades. The children of 1999, he told CNN, are "deep down, the same" as the children of 1969 (and, you can surmise, the children of 1909 and 2009): "We all long to be lovable, and capable of loving."

Fred McFeely Rogers (now you know where Mr. McFeely, the Neighborhood's Speedy Delivery man, got his name) was born on March 20, 1928, in Latrobe, Pa. He has lived in the state of his birth for most of his 71 years -- in fact, he received a "Pennsylvania Founder's Award" in June 1999 for his "lifelong contribution to the Commonwealth in the spirit of Pennsylvania's founder, William Penn." A pianist since age 9, Rogers majored in music composition at Rollins College in Florida. But after graduation, he became curious about the new medium of television and went to New York City to investigate. He worked for a couple of years as a floor manager for the NBC shows "Your Hit Parade" and "The Kate Smith Hour," but his heart wasn't in it. "I got into television because I hated it so," Rogers told CNN. "And I thought there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen."

Rogers married his college sweetheart, Sara Joanne Byrd (now you know where Queen Sara from the Neighborhood of Make Believe got her name), moved back to Pittsburgh and began experimenting with "educational television." In 1954, at Pittsburgh's WQED, the nation's first public television station, Rogers developed "The Children's Corner," a prototype for "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" that was the birthplace for several of the Neighborhood's puppets. In 1963, Rogers created a 15-minute version of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" for Canadian television, then returned to Pittsburgh where, the following year, WQED launched the series as a half-hour show. In 1969, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" began airing on PBS stations across the United States.

During the run of "The Children's Corner," Rogers began taking courses in child development; he also began attending the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. In 1962, he became an ordained minister. Rogers' interest in nurturing both psyche and soul made "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" a children's programming original. His dove-ish gentleness and concern for allaying children's fears of war and nuclear annihilation (he did a landmark series of shows from the Soviet Union in 1987) made him a hero of progressive parenting. With his nondenominational approach to children's curiosity about God, death and spirituality, Rogers was a quiet advocate of "faith" and "values" long before they became political buzzwords. And his use of puppets to mirror children's feelings about, for instance, sibling rivalry or separation anxiety ushered in a new era of emotional frankness in children's programming. When his pet goldfish died, Mister Rogers didn't just get new ones; he told his viewers -- his "television neighbors" -- what happened, and used the occasion to talk about loss and sadness.

Next page | "Oh, a singing psychologist for children!"