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Fred Rogers




Fred McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 - February 27, 2003)
was the host of the internationally acclaimed children's television show
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Mister Rogers, as he became known to millions,
was an ordained Presbyterian minister, who lived and worked in the
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area for most of his life.

Rogers' show won four Emmy awards, including one for lifetime achievement.
He also received a George Foster Peabody award in 1983, "in recognition of
25 beautiful years in the neighborhood". On July 9, 2002, Fred Rogers
received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to
children's education. "Fred Rogers has proven that television can soothe the
soul and nurture the spirit and teach the very young," said President George
W. Bush at the presentation.

He was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles southeast of
Pittsburgh. He studied early childhood development at the University of
Pittsburgh.

Life and work

In 1954, he began working at WQED Pittsburgh as a puppeteer on a local
children's television series, The Children's Corner. For the next seven
years, he worked in unscripted live TV, and developed many of the puppets,
characters and music used in his later work, such as King Friday the XIII,
and Curious X the Owl.

During this period, for eight years he gave up lunch breaks to study
theology at a nearby seminary. He had planned to enter seminary after
college, but had been diverted into television. In 1962 he was ordained as a
Presbyterian minister, and specifically charged to continue his work with
children's TV.

In 1963, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation contracted him to develop a
15 minute children's show, Mister Rogers' Show.

In 1966 he moved the show back to WQED in Pittsburgh, incorporating parts of
the show into a show he developed for the Eastern Educational Network to
cities including Boston, Massachusetts, Washington, DC and New York City.

Distribution of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood began on National Educational
Television on February 19, 1968. The following year the show moved to the
PBS network, where it continues to be broadcast today. The last set of new
episodes was taped in December 2000 and began airing on August 2001.

After returning to Pittsburgh, he was an active congregational member in the
Sixth Presbyterian church of Pittsburgh until his death.

Mister Rogers

Each show began the same way, with Mister Rogers coming home and singing his
theme song, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" and changing into comfortable shoes
and a red, zippered cardigan sweater.

The show's target audience was chiefly pre-school children and featured none
of the animation or fast pace of Sesame Street. Rogers, who composed all the
music for the show, would interact with live guests or with the puppets of
his "Neighborhood of Make-Believe", featuring a trolley (with its own
chiming theme song), a castle and various citizens of the kingdom.

Mister Rogers was concerned with teaching children to love themselves and
others. He also tried to address common childhood fears with comforting
songs and skits. For example, one of his famous songs explains how you can't
be pulled down the bathtub drain - because you won't fit.

During the Gulf War, he assured children that all children in the
neighborhood would be well cared-for, and asked parents to promise to take
care of their children.

Guest stars were often surprised to find that he was a perfectionist,
unwilling to let half-baked ad-libbing go on the air. He thought children
were people and deserved shows as good as anything else on TV. Guests on the
show ranged from cellist Yo-Yo Ma to actor and bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno of
TV's The Incredible Hulk.

Rogers is quoted as saying, "I got into television because I hated it so.
And I thought there was some way of using this fabulous instrument to be of
nurture to those who would watch and listen."

His gentle manner has been lampooned by some comedians, notably a parody
called "Mister Robinson's Neighborhood," on Saturday Night Live by Eddie
Murphy in the 1980s. Rogers found the routine funny and affectionate. [1]
When Murphy met Mister Rogers, he embraced him and respectfully pronounced
him "the real Mister Rogers". Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion
radio broadcasts also ran parodies of Rogers.

Fred Rogers succumbed to cancer of the stomach a short time after his
retirement. He was 74 years old.

On March 4, 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives passed Resolution 111 by
a vote of 412-0 honoring Rogers "for his legendary service to the
improvement of the lives of children, his steadfast commitment to
demonstrating the power of compassion, and his dedication to spreading
kindness through example."

On May 2, 2003, the International Astronomical Union announced that an
asteroid, formerly known as No. 26858, had been renamed "Misterrogers." The
announcement was made by the director of the Henry Buhl Jr. Planetarium &
Observatory at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh. The science center
worked with Rogers' "Family Communications, Inc." to produce a planetarium
show for preschoolers called "The Sky Above Mister Rogers' Neighborhood",
which plays at planetariums across the United States.

Sniper Rumors

A rumor (turned urban myth) developed that Fred Rogers was, at some point in
his life, a sniper for the United States army in Vietnam (or elsewhere), and
that he wore his trademark long-sleeved red cardigan sweater to cover the
tattoos of his army days. Though this rumor has been thoroughly debunked, it
continues to have some circulation. Its persistence represents a typical
subculture-style distortion: a popular, well-loved icon is asserted to be a
killer when, by all credible accounts, Fred Rogers was simply an incredibly
nice and gentle human being.

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