Background and career
Fred McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003), also known professionally as Mister Rogers, was an American television personality, Presbyterian minister, and author. He was the creator, showrunner, and host of the preschool television series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which ran from 1968 to 2001. Born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Rogers earned a bachelor's degree in music from Rollins College in 1951. He began his television career at NBC in New York City, returning to Pittsburgh in 1953 to work for children's programming at NET (later PBS) television station WQED. He graduated from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary with a bachelor's degree in divinity in 1962 and became a Presbyterian minister in 1963. He attended the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Child Development, where he began his thirty-year collaboration with child psychologist Margaret McFarland. He also helped develop the children's shows The Children's Corner (1955) for WQED in Pittsburgh and Misterogers (1963) in Canada for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 1968, he returned to Pittsburgh and adapted the format of his Canadian series to create Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. It ran for 33 years and was critically acclaimed for focusing on children's emotional and physical concerns, such as death, sibling rivalry, school enrollment, and divorce. Rogers died of stomach cancer in 2003, aged 74. His work in children's television has been widely lauded, and he received more than forty honorary degrees and several awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 1997 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999. Rogers influenced many writers and producers of children's television shows, and his broadcasts provided comfort during incidents, even after his death.
Fred Rogers was born in 1928, at 705 Main Street in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. His father, James Hillis Rogers, was "a very successful businessman" who was president of the McFeely Brick Company, one of Latrobe's most prominent businesses and founded in 1900. His mother, Nancy (née McFeely), knitted sweaters for American soldiers from western Pennsylvania who were fighting in Europe and regularly volunteered at the Latrobe Hospital. Initially dreaming of becoming a doctor, she settled for a life of hospital volunteer work. Her father, Fred Brooks McFeely, after whom Rogers was named, was an entrepreneur. Rogers grew up in a large three-story brick house at 737 Weldon Street in Latrobe. He had a sister, Elaine, whom the Rogerses adopted when he was eleven years old. Rogers spent much of his childhood alone, playing with puppets, and spending time with his grandfather. He began playing the piano when he was five. Rogers had a difficult childhood. Shy, introverted, and overweight, he was frequently homebound after suffering bouts of asthma. He was bullied as a child for his weight and called "Fat Freddy". According to Morgan Neville, director of the 2018 documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, Rogers had a "lonely childhood ... I think he made friends with himself as much as he could. He had a ventriloquist dummy, he had [stuffed] animals, and he would create his own worlds in his childhood bedroom".
Rogers attended Latrobe High School, where he overcame his shyness. "It was tough for me at the beginning," Rogers told NPR's Terry Gross in 1984, "and then I made a couple friends who found out that the core of me was okay. And one of them was ... the head of the football team". Rogers became president of the student council, a member of the National Honor Society, and editor-in-chief of the school yearbook. He registered for the draft in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, in 1948 at age 20, where he was classified 1-A (available for military service); however, his status was changed to unqualified for military service following an Armed Forces physical on October 12, 1950. He attended Dartmouth College for one year before transferring to Rollins College, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1951 with a Bachelor of Music. He then attended Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1962 with a Bachelor of Divinity, and was ordained a Presbyterian minister by the Pittsburgh Presbytery of the United Presbyterian Church in 1963. His work as an ordained minister, rather than pastoring a church, was ministering to children and their families through television. He regularly appeared before church officials to maintain his ordination.
Rogers wanted to enter seminary after college, but instead chose to go into the nascent medium of television after experiencing TV at his parents' home in 1951, during his senior year at Rollins College. In a CNN interview, he said, "I went into television because I hated it so, and I thought there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen". After graduating in 1951, he worked at NBC in New York City as floor director of Your Hit Parade, The Kate Smith Hour, and Gabby Hayes's children's show, and as an assistant producer of The Voice of Firestone.
In 1953, Rogers returned to Pittsburgh to work as a program developer at public television station WQED. Josie Carey worked with him to develop the children's show The Children's Corner, which Carey hosted. Rogers worked off-camera to develop puppets, characters, and music for the show. He used many puppet characters developed during this time, such as Daniel the Striped Tiger (named after WQED's station manager, Dorothy Daniel, who gave Rogers a tiger puppet before the show's premiere), King Friday XIII, Queen Sara Saturday (named after Rogers' wife), X the Owl, Henrietta, and Lady Elaine, in his later work. Children's television entertainer Ernie Coombs was an assistant puppeteer. The Children's Corner won a Sylvania Award for best locally produced children's programming in 1955 and was broadcast nationally on NBC. While working on the show, Rogers attended Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1963. He also attended the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Child Development, where he began working with child psychologist Margaret McFarland—who, according to Rogers' biographer Maxwell King, became his "key advisor and collaborator" and "child-education guru". Much of Rogers' "thinking about and appreciation for children was shaped and informed" by McFarland. She was his consultant for most of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood's scripts and songs for 30 years.
In 1963, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Toronto contracted Rogers to come develop and host the 15-minute black-and-white children's program Misterogers; it lasted from 1963 to 1967. It was the first time Rogers appeared on camera. CBC's children's programming head Fred Rainsberry insisted on it, telling Rogers, "Fred, I've seen you talk with kids. Let's put you yourself on the air". Coombs joined Rogers in Toronto as an assistant puppeteer. Rogers also worked with Coombs on the children's show Butternut Square from 1964 to 1967. Rogers acquired the rights to Misterogers in 1967 and returned to Pittsburgh with his wife, two young sons, and the sets he developed, despite a potentially promising career with CBC and no job prospects in Pittsburgh. On Rogers' recommendation, Coombs remained in Toronto and became Rogers' Canadian equivalent of an iconic television personality, creating the children's program Mr. Dressup, which ran from 1967 to 1996. Rogers' work for CBC "helped shape and develop the concept and style of his later program for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the U.S."
