The Plaza Theatre in Kensington has been playing A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood this week. My friend, Katrina, who had already watched the movie starring her favourite actor, Tom Hanks, decided that I needed to see it. She was right. The movie follows the inspiring true story of Mr. Rogers, as he is interviewed for Esquire magazine for their hero feature. While the movie strays off of a biographical path, it encapsulates the enchanting patience that Fred Rogers brought to humankind. The story is shared in such a direct way, it unveils the at times mystical thoughtfulness that Mr. Rogers put at the forefront of his television show and life. Mr. Rogers was fighting a war for silence, as his article in Esquire, Can You Say… Hero, explains. Speaking on his lasting fight, the journalist Tom Junod wrote,
And yet still he fights, deathly afraid that the medium he chose is consuming the very things he tried to protect: childhood and silence.
That silence is respected. The moments when Hanks is reenacting real-life scenes of honesty and understanding that Fred Rogers lived, the audience in the intimate Plaza Theatre held their breath, each word hanging in the air and burrowing deep within each person. Some advice that carried with the many of us sitting in the crowd was something Fred Rogers continually lived by: ‘Everything that is human is mentionable, and everything that is mentionable is manageable.’ This extensive thought allowed his television program to resonate with decades of children, opening their eyes to seemingly impossible obstacles that Mr. Rogers helped guide them along. What this movie truly captured was Mr. Rogers’ respect for children, and his desire to allow them to feel special.
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Fred Rogers was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania in 1928. It was in college when Rogers first saw a television set. He was visiting his parents during his senior year where he was studying music composition, when he was awed by a new addition to the living room. It was a medium he saw a future in, but one he knew he had to fight against. Children’s television has already begun to be centred around slapstick comedy and dizzying edits. Mr. Rogers believed that children deserved more.
In 1953, after working in New York, WQED in Pittsburg hired Rogers to work in programming. Within a year, he was co-producing a new program in Canada, The Children’s Corner. Rogers had a specific fondness for puppets when he was a child, and his friends of youth soon became lifelong partners as he introduced them to his young audience. After he was ordained, Mr. Rogers took his wife Joanne and his two boys back to Pennsylvania, and in 1966, Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood came to be.
The first time Fred Rogers weighed himself as Mr. Rogers, he came in at 143 pounds. He decided, at that moment, that was the weight of Mr. Rogers. For the rest of his life, he didn’t drink, smoke, or eat any kind of flesh, he swam every day, got eight hours of sleep undisturbed, and napped in the afternoon, making sure to pray for others often. He quickly became well acquainted with that number, 143, and every time he would look down at the scale, he felt lucky, for 1,4,3 is the same number of letters in ‘I love you.’
Although running for decades on PBS, specifically from 1968 to 2001, the show changed little. Each episode, Mr. Rogers entered a confined set with sky blue backgrounds, entered his house, changed out of his jacket and dress shoes, and put on his navy boat shoes and cardigan made by his mother. From the beginning, Fred Rogers addressed each child individually with his gaze, and he taught them with directness and gentleness. His show didn’t just mention, but explained the real-world issues and events that kids of all decades had to experience. Katrina’s father still remembers his episode on assassination. After the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Mr. Rogers enlisted the help of his puppet, Daniel the Lion, to ask the question that was on the lips of millions of American children,
What does assassination mean?
Mr. Rogers didn’t shy away from the gravity of the situation, but faced it head-on, expressing his concern for all the children who needed to cope with a surprising and confusing tragedy.
https://youtu.be/_MRC0qu75TU
Mr. Rogers’ characters and rituals were comforting in conversations that were hard to manage. He always stayed at the centre of the show, working as a producer, host, head puppeteer, and writer of the scripts and songs, but at the centre of that was always the children.
As his program crossed into its fourth decade, Fred Rogers slowed down, and in December 2000, Mr. Rogers taped his final episode. In December 2002, Rogers was diagnosed with stomach cancer, and on February 27, 2003, Fred Rogers passed with Joanne at his side, in his home in Pittsburg.
It wasn’t just Mr. Rogers’ dedication to children’s education on television that made him so special; in fact, it was how he lived his everyday life and how he treated everyday people. The Esquire profile that is highlighted in A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood paints that consistency clearly. Starting each story with ‘once upon a time,’ Tom Junod creates an image of the real-life Fred Rogers that brings his character outside of the sky blue set and into everyday life, into reality. He never forgot what it felt like to be a child.
‘Once upon a time,’ Junod begins, Mr. Rogers met a boy with cerebral palsy who had experienced a lot of pain, that didn’t want to live anymore, and didn’t love himself very much. He did, however, love Mr. Rogers, and at the age of fourteen, he continued to watch his program. Fred Rogers met this boy, and he asked him to pray for him. The boy was shocked, and he felt that if someone as close to God as Mr. Rogers loved him, God must love him too. Rogers didn’t know that this simple act of intimacy was going to make this boy want to live, he acted in the simple innocence that anyone who has gone through challenges like that boy must be dear to God.
Again, ‘once upon a time,’ a boy told his friends that he was doing something ‘really big’ the next day. In December of 1997, he shot eight children in West Paducah, Kentucky. Mr. Rogers had wished that the boy would have done something ‘really little,’ and he dedicated a week to the theme ‘Little and Big.’ Mr. Rogers was explaining an architect, someone who makes big buildings out of little designs, with the famous New York architect, Maya Lin. Lin was responsible for the clock that hung in Penn Station, and that’s where Rogers filmed. In New York City, Mr. Rogers was surrounded by people who respected and loved him. His producer, Margy Whitmer, tried to explain that if they left some information, Fred Rogers would send them an autographed picture, but every time she turned her back, Mr. Rogers could be found smiling, wiping tears, or down on one knee, speaking softly to a child. Whitmer eventually gave in.
As the story continues, ‘once upon a time,’ Fred Rogers met a boy with a big sword. The boy’s mother loved Mr. Rogers very much, but the boy did not seem to be very interested. In Penn Station, where Rogers was filming at the time, the mother apologized, knowing he was probably in a rush, for her little boy’s lack of enthusiasm. Fred Rogers wasn’t going anywhere. He leaned over and whispered something to the boy, which didn’t cause a physical change, but altered the look in his eyes in a just as dramatic way and caused the boy to nod. Junod asked Rogers what he said,
Oh, I just knew that whenever you see a little boy carrying something like that, it means that he wants to show people that he’s strong on the outside. I just wanted to let him know that he was strong on the inside, too. And so that’s what I told him. I said, ‘Do you know that you’re strong on the inside, too?’ Maybe it was something he needed to hear.
Surely you now know that ‘once upon a time,’ a blind man, who had suffered abuse, realized that he lived no childhood at all, and he decided to start. Firstly, he rechristened himself as Joybubbles, secondly, he declared himself eternally five years old, thirdly, he moved to Pittsburg for the University of Pittsburgh’s Information Sciences Library, which keeps a Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood archive. It had 865 episodes, which the blind Joybubbles listened to and imagined for 10 hours every day. Mr. Rogers, caring deeply about him, had a dream, which he referred to as a visitation, in which he taught Joybubbles a simple prayer, ‘Thank you, God.’
Mr. Rogers spoke with intimacy and grace, with thoughtfulness and kindness, and as it turns out, that was often returned. Because ‘once upon a time,’ when Mr. Rogers couldn’t get a taxi and needed to escape the rain, he took the metro. The New York train was crowded with students, mostly black and latino. They didn’t come up and ask for an autograph; instead, they sang. Everyone on the train, young and old, sang ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbour?’
However, his thoughtfulness and virtues didn’t just arise in the presence of children like a hot air balloon in the presence of a flame. His fire was always burning. ‘Once upon a time,’ after winning his third Daytime Emmy, Fred Rogers went onstage to accept Emmy’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He had already spent decades working towards establishing silence and reflection through the medium he adored, but he continued that night as well,
All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are….Ten seconds of silence.
While the crowd may have thought so, Mr. Rogers wasn’t joking, and he lifted his wrist to count a slow ten seconds that left the audience in tears.
Fred Rogers lived a fantastic life; he enjoyed an amazing family, grew his passion for children, and provided millions with the lessons to face the world, which didn’t always turn out to be the kindest. However, what left me struck after learning more about him and watching him portrayed in A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, was that he was real.
As simple as it is, the magic of Mr. Rogers is that he isn’t a character. He is a living soul, he is Fred Rogers. His actions are real, his motives are real, his gentleness, patience, and love for humankind are all real. Every minute, every detail, every 143 pounds is a living example of kindness.
Often, I find that people describe others as kind when they’re at a loss of the proper adjective that describes them. Mr. Rogers isn’t in that majority. His life was, from the beginning, dedicated to kindness, and like no one before, he extended that work to children, not by side effect, but by focus and purpose. Fred Rogers continues to live within childhood as a whole; sometimes he’s a song, sometimes a puppet, sometimes he’s an explanation of a terrifying concept, and sometimes he’s a smiling face.
It’s the reality and honesty of his life that is the true inspiration. Even though he shared his fair share of anger, which he relieved with swimming, piano, and prayer, he thoughtfully, every minute of every day, chose love. Katrina was right when she said I needed to come with her to the Plaza Theatre. Not because of Tom Hanks’ perfect accent or the amazing sets, but because it permanently reminded me (rather, taught me it seems) that it’s possible to simply be kind, always.
Tom Junod wrote in Esquire,
Once upon a time, a man named Fred Rogers decided that he wanted to live in heaven. Heaven is the place where good people go when they die, but this man, Fred Rogers, didn’t want to go to heaven; he wanted to live in heaven, here, now, in this world…
And, as the story went, Mr. Rogers did, with all the connections and investments he made with all his fellow people on Earth. Along the way, he taught us all how to do the same.
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(I highly suggest reading the article Can You Say… Hero linked above. It gives amazing insight into Mr. Rogers’ life and is deeply personal. Now, it is a huge inspiration to me, just as Mr. Rogers is himself.)
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