The Ruffled Crow

Fred McFeely Rogers was a neighbor and friend of mine for all of my life. I never had the honor of meeting the man, and he had no idea who I was, but that didn’t matter; he cared about me and thought I was special. That was something I knew.

A week ago, March 20th, Mr Rogers (and all of us) would have celebrated his 83rd birthday. He died back in 2003, but the care, concern, and deep love he had for all of us remains.

As a reminder here are just a few glimpses back at this quiet and remarkable man.

ONCE UPON A TIME, a tong time ago, a man took off his jacket and put on a sweater. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of sneakers. His name was Fred Rogers. He was starting a television program, aimed at children, called Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He had been on television before, but only as the voices and movements of puppets, on a program called The Children’s Corner. Now he was stepping in front of the camera as Mister Rogers, and he wanted to do things right, and whatever he did right, he wanted to repeat. And so, once upon a time, Fred Rogers took off his jacket and put on a sweater his mother had made him, a cardigan with a zipper. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of navy-blue canvas boating sneakers. He did the same thing the next day, and then the next… until he had done the same things, those things, 865 times, at the beginning of 865 television programs, over a span of thirty-one years.

Tom Junod via Can You Say… “Hero”? (a wonderful read, please stop in and read the entire post)

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