Column on Mister rogers

When I was little, before the days of public television, WQED in Pittsburgh ran a children’s show conceived by and starring Fred Rogers, The Children’s Corner. Eventually, it would be broadcast nationally. Fred Rogers was ordained in the Presbytery of Pittsburgh to be Mister Rogers. While he was working on the program he went to one class a term at the Pittsburgh Seminary. During the same time, he did work in child development at Duquesne in Pittsburgh.

A new documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, will be available soon at the Landmark Theatre group in St Louis. When it was shown at the Sundance Festival early this year, it received a standing ovation, where hardened critics applauded with tears in their eyes. I plan to see it, but I doubt it can affect me as deeply as Tom Junod’s masterpiece in Esquire years ago, 1998, that dared to call him a hero on its cover. (It is the inspiration for a movie about Fred Rogers with Tom Hanks as the star).

Fox, of course, had a piece against him, since he was the embodiment of civility and restraint. He was such a “holy fool” that he was more than willing to become the  target of so many jokes, even on SCTV and Saturday Night Live. While Rodney Dangerfield received no respect, Fred Rogers did his best to respect everyone.

Dear Mr. Rogers is a collection of letters sent to him with his responses over the years. One of the first ones asked if he were real, or if he were in a costume like Big Bird. He answered every letter he received from a child. He would visit a child when he took trips for the program, based on letter he received.

Once he visited a teen with cerebral palsy. The boy thought God hated him because some of the caretakers who abused him told him so. He was so nervous when Mister Rogers came to visit that he started hitting himself again, hard. Fred Rogers waited and asked the boy if he would do something for him. The boy typed yes on a screen. The Rev. Rogers asked him to pray for him, could he do that?  Yes, he said and was good to his word. He thought that Fred Rogers was close to God and if asked him to pray that meant God loved the boy too.

I admire him so as he respected his audience of children so. He did not talk down to them but he struggled so to speak at what he perceived was their level of comprehension. What triggers tears in many of us is the image of our missed past. Few aspire to treat even those whom we profess love with the respect and dignity they so richly deserve. Maybe he brings back some of the innocence of childhood before the slights start to dig deep. Maybe he knew that grace could help heal the wounds too long carried. Maybe he treated his audience the way the saw themselves in the recesses of their hearts, as worthy of love, to be accepted as Paul Tillich said.

Fred Rogers was a sacred and secular saint. That does not mean perfection, but it does mean a model toward which we can aspire in our own lives. How would he have used social media, for instance?

I have wondered repeatedly how Jesus would work in a modern era. I have wondered if he would make movies: Sch8indler’s List as an exemplar of the story of the Good Samaritan. Maybe Jesus would have a program for children.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”