Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 3, 1990 TAG: 9003033046
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 17 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By the early '80s, Rogers had become such a legend that Eddie Murphy spoofed "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" on the irreverent "Saturday Night Live."
But more importantly, Fred Rogers is the man you trusted when you, or your children, were very small and needed to know more about the big, baffling world.
Yet you may not know much about him beyond his gentle and careful, even meticulous manner. A PBS special, "Our Neighbor, Fred Rogers," will fill you in on Monday (at 8 p.m. on Channel 15 in the Roanoke viewing area).
Rogers, who will be 62 on March 20, was born to an upper-middle-class family in Latrobe, Pa., the only child of James and Nancy McFeely Rogers. When he was 11, they adopted a daughter, Elaine.
A plump child with allergies, Rogers was not allowed to go outside the house without being accompanied. Without going further into his upbringing, he explains that it was the piano that allowed little Fred, who "didn't want to be a bad boy," to act out his emotions through music.
After a year at Dartmouth Rogers switched to Rollins College in Florida and earned a bachelor of music degree, magna cum laude, in 1951. When he was a college senior, he happened to get a look at children's shows on his parents' new set, was appalled by their lack of quality and decided to postpone divinity studies to try his hand at the young medium.
He spent 1951 to 1953 in New York City working at NBC-TV, first as a go-fer, then as floor manager of "The Kate Smith Hour" and "The Gabby Hayes Show." In 1953 he took his young wife, Sara Joanne Byrd, a pianist he had met at Rollins, back to Pittsburgh, where he helped start the nation's first PBS station, WQED.
Rogers and local actress Josie Carey started "The Children's Corner." She was on camera, bantering with Daniel Striped Tiger, who lived in a cuckoo clock.
Rogers was the behind-the-scenes puppeteer, who changed from street shoes to sneakers so he could run quietly behind the set during the show (a tradition he has continued on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood").
Rogers's is also the voice of Henrietta Pussycat, King Friday the 13th and Queen Sarah, Lady Elaine Fairchild and other puppets who appear in his Neighborhood of Make Believe segments - each one a facet of Rogers himself, says Carey. Even the "Speedy Delivery" man, Mr. McFeely, is named for Rogers's grandfather.
Rogers stayed at WQED until 1962, when he took "Misterogers" to the CBC in Toronto for two years, returning in 1965 to bring "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" to PBS, where it is the longest-running children's program on public television, and the recipient of many honors including Emmys and a Peabody Award.
by CNB