Mister Rogers was my Neighbor

In Atlanta's Tara Theatre to see the new documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, I had a sudden flashback to the day I met Fred Rogers in person. What stimulated the memory was archival footage of him in 1968, greeting a studio full of enchanted kids and their parents for a meet and greet.  He enters on the set of his show, waving to all, wearing his famous red sweater.

My family lived in Pittsburgh until I was seven, years when Fred Rogers developed Mister Rogers' Neighborhood there for WQED.  Our TV was black and white; what I suddenly recalled was my delight to see him in full color, and awe when he turned those intensely attentive eyes to me.

Did it really happen? For certain, I remember that Dad took me downtown on a Saturday to see another personality at the station, "Miss Jordan"; I believe, now, that Fred Rogers was part of that day, too.

Even if my memory is playing some kind of trick, the documentary is an eye-opener to what Fred Rogers offers, even today.

Mister Rogers offers courteous persuasion when he wins over a senate panel intent on de-funding the fledgling Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1969.  Visibly bored, chairman Senator John Pastore announces that he won't waste any more time listening to a witness reading prepared text that he could read himself.  Rogers, prepared text in hand, smiles, and, sweet as always, makes a deal: "One of the things that a child in a healthy family learns is trust," and says that he trusts Senator Pastore to read the text, "because it is very important to me." Pastore is taken aback, and promises. Rogers then explains that educational TV offers kids the message that feelings are mentionable and manageable. For an example, he recites lyrics based on a boy who asked, "What do I do with the mad inside me?" The verse speaks to how the child can feel like he does everything wrong, like he has no control; but the chorus tells what you can do with those feelings: "You can stomp! stomp! stomp!"  Pastore says, "You just got your twenty million dollars!"

Mister Rogers models an age-appropriate way to reassure anxious children, without pretending that it's all okay.  The homely little hand puppet "Daniel the Tiger," voiced by Rogers, asks the adult actress on screen to blow up a balloon.  After watching silently awhile, he asks, "What's assassination?"

[At this point in the story, whether I've heard a recording, told someone about it, or written about it, I've teared up.  Telling Mom about it at a café, I wept copiously. I don't understand why.  Is it "Daniel's" voice?  Friends and family of Fred Rogers tell us on screen that his childhood self speaks through Daniel, and perhaps it's a universal inner voice.  Maybe it's a residual memory of 1968, a year I recall well for frightening escalation of war, two assassinations, and riots.  Or is it the timing?  After a period of silence, during the blowing up of the balloon, the question seems to come out of nowhere -- but we realize that "Daniel" had seemed distracted and down before. I think that's it: How many of us were afraid to speak questions because we knew that Mom and Dad would be uncomfortable answering them?]  

She explains that assassination is when someone gets killed in a "surprising way" that leaves everyone feeling sad and frightened.  NPR's Fresh Air played what happens moments later, not shown in the documentary. The actress lets air out of the balloon to explain death to "Daniel": the air goes out and doesn't come back in. The image is simple, familiar, non-threatening.

Mister Rogers confronts racism without saying a word about it, simply offering "Officer Clemmons" a chance to cool his black feet in a wading pool beside his own white feet -- an episode that aired during a summer when whites were furiously reacting to black teens' attempts to use public pools nation wide.  (The pools in Atlanta closed rather than integrate.) Emulating Jesus -- for Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister -- he kneels to dry the feet of Officer Clemmons with his own towel.

That foot - bathing scene replays years later, with a different subtext.  The two grown men express affection for each other, and discuss how it's all right for men to say how they feel.  We learn in the documentary that Fred Rogers, upon learning that actor Francois Clemmons was gay, told him to keep the secret or be fired.  By the time of that replay of the wading pool, Fred Rogers had told Clemmons that the lyrics of his closing song were for him: "I like you as you are."

Mister Rogers shows us how to listen.  When he listens to little children in a crowd, or to adults (during his short-lived series Old Friends, New Friends for grown-ups), his eyes don't waver, don't even blink, while he waits for the other to finish. In fact, he waits even longer, silence encouraging the other to say more.

His most memorable interview, he said, was with a boy, wheelchair-bound, named Steve, in the week before last-chance surgery. Without a script, Rogers listens to Steve tell about his mechanized wheel chair, and about things he likes, and about how he sometimes "feels blue." "But I'm not feeling blue now," Mister Rogers says. And, to the surprise of everyone on the set, they improvise a duet.

Another memorable interview was with the famous gorilla Koko.  She peels his socks off, looks closely in his eyes, and hugs him. [News reported Koko's death on the day I saw the documentary.]

Mister Rogers teaches us to keep quiet.  In silence, he watches a turtle crawl towards the camera; he sets an egg-timer to show what a minute feels like. That was "terrible TV," comments one associate, but it worked.  Late in life, speaking to college graduates, he pauses for a full minute while his audience is asked to think of the people in their lives who made them feel special.  We see graduates moved to tears; when the documentary's director turns the same challenge to friends and associates interviewed for the film, some of them are in tears, too.  So are we.

Mister Rogers was an easy target for mockery -- Rogers tells us that the most memorable mocker, Eddie Murphy, hugged him when they met -- but I was not aware how viciously he was attacked for telling little children that they are valued as they are.  Conservatives blamed him for creating a generation of cry-babies who feel entitled.  They asked,  What about responsibility? What about hard work? What about doing something to make yourself worthy?  

Discipline turns out to have been as much a part of Fred Rogers as kindness.  We see his daily workout, a slow, steady swimming of one mile at an indoor pool.  Every day, for years, he maintained his weight at 143 pounds, a number that, for him, signified "I love you" -- one letter, four letters, three letters -- and he exerted will to keep the weight, to keep his cool, to maintain his message in the face of mockery and incomprehension.