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Come on over a minute.
I just had some ideas
that I'd been thinking about for quite a while...
about modulation.
It seems to me that there are...
different themes in life.
And one of my main jobs,
it seems to me,
is to help through the mass media,
for children...
To help children
through some of the difficult modulations of life.
Because it's easy, for instance, to go from C...
to F.
But there are some modulations that aren't so easy.
For instance, to go from F to F-sharp,
you've got to weave through all sorts of things.
And it seems to me, if you've got somebody
to help you as you weave...
Maybe this is just too philosophical.
Maybe I'm trying to... to combine, uh, things that...
that can't be combined, but it makes sense to me.
14 years ago, a television program for children
made its inauspicious debut on station WQED in Pittsburgh.
Its host, Fred Rogers, an ordained minister
with an abiding interest in children
and an equally abiding belief
that they deserve more from television.
♪ It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood ♪
♪ A beautiful day for a neighbor ♪
♪ Would you be mine? ♪
♪ Could you be mine? ♪
♪ It's a neighborly day in this beautywood ♪
♪ A neighborly day for a beauty ♪
♪ Would you be mine? ♪
♪ Could you be mine? ♪
♪ I have always wanted to have a neighbor ♪
♪ Just like you ♪
♪ I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood ♪
♪ With you, so ♪
♪ Let's make the most of this beautiful day ♪
♪ Since we're together, we might as well say ♪
♪ Would you be mine? ♪
♪ Could you be mine? ♪
♪ Won't you be my neighbor? ♪
♪ Won't you please? Won't you please? ♪
♪ Please, won't you be ♪
♪ My neighbor? ♪
- Mr. Rogers? - Yes.
Where do you live?
- I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. - Oh.
Did you want to...
- Pardon me? - They are gathered
in this television studio with Fred Rogers,
an adult who cares just about them.
His reward is the love of millions of children.
I want to tell you something.
What would you like to tell me?
- I like you. - I like you, my dear.
Thank you very much for telling me that.
We had a director that once said to me,
"If you take all of the elements
"that make good television
"and do the exact opposite,
you have Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."
Low production values, simple set,
unlikely star.
Yet, it worked.
Because he was saying something really important.
Love is at the root of everything.
All learning, all parenting,
all relationships.
Love or the lack of it.
And what we see and hear on the screen
is part of who we become.
He had a singular vision
of kindness and love,
but a question that I think of a lot, in terms of Fred,
is whether his attempt
to influence America succeeded or not.
I was all set to go to the seminary
to become a minister,
but I went home my senior year for a vacation,
and I saw this new thing called television.
Tootsie roll! America's favorite candy...
And I saw people
throwing pies in each other's faces.
And I thought, "This could be a wonderful tool.
Why is it being used this way?"
And so I said to my parents,
"You know, I don't think I'll go to seminary right away.
I think maybe I'll go into television."
And they said, "Wait, but you've never even seen it."
Station WQED
is located in the heart of Pittsburgh.
His father told him about this new station
that was coming along here.
It was going to be called...
It was called educational television.
♪ Why, hi, don't I know you? ♪
Nobody wanted to do a children's program.
And I said, "Well, we need a children's program."
And I said, "Well, I'll produce it
"and play some music in the background.
"We'll get some free films,
and, Josie, you can introduce them."
And then we discovered the awful fact
that when you got free film,
it was often brittle, and it would break.
And if you were on the air live,
you had to do something.
Somebody had given me this little tiger puppet.
I pushed it through the clock and said,
"Hi, Josie. It's 5:02,
and Columbus discovered America in 1492,"
and then just went right back in.
And that's how the puppetry began.
We never expected to use puppets.
You know that... so much of it
was the necessity being the mother of that invention.
My friend, Daniel Striped Tiger.
How do you do? How do you do?
The interesting thing was...
Dad remembered being six and seven
and eight and nine years old.
That inner child never really went away.
I had every imaginable
childhood disease, even scarlet fever.
Whenever I was, uh, quarantined,
I would be in bed a lot.
I would put up my knees,
and they would be mountains covered with the sheet.
And I'd have all these little figures moving around,
and I'd... I'd make them talk.
I had to make up a lot of my own fun.
Eh! Take that.
Eh, eh, eh!
What's the matter?
Over time, Fred became
unsatisfied with The Children's Corner.
He thought that it was
simple and slapstick.
And he said he really wanted to concentrate
on the seminary, so he wanted to stop for a while.
His ordination was
as an evangelist for television.
It was pretty way out there for the Presbyterian church.
With television,
Fred wanted to focus on the very young.
What do you think it is?
Lion!
A lion. Great.
Back in the 1950s, there was a school of people
at the University of Pittsburgh
looking at early childhood education.
What was it?
They felt that physicians
needed a training ground
so that they had a sense of where human behavior
was coming from from the very beginning.
Dr. Benjamin Spock was part of it.
Berry Brazelton, the famous pediatrician, was a part of it.
Erik Erikson, the extraordinary psychologist, was a part of it.
And Fred's part of that group.
He-he became part of the group
as a student of Margaret McFarland.
Fred, I think,
to the child, the television program
between you and the child is a real relationship.
For him to say,
"The feelings of a young child
are every bit as powerful as our adult feelings,"
he was radical.
I know everyone says that, but he was radical.
I've always felt that...
That I didn't need to put on a funny hat
or jump through the hoop
to have a relationship with a child.
I went to visit with a new nursery school.
I had never met these children before.
And I walked in,
and there was a long stare from most of them.
And one little boy by the name of Thatcher spoke first.
And all he said was,
"My doggy's ear came off
in the automatic washer."
And there was silence.
Just complete silence.
It was as if,
"This is your test, Mr. Rogers.
Are you still in touch with childhood?"
And so I said,
"Sometimes that happens to toys, doesn't it?
"Their ears come off or their legs come off,
"but that never happens to us.
"Our ears don't come off.
"Our noses don't come off.
Our arms don't come off."
And Thatcher's eyes were getting bigger
and bigger and bigger, and he said,
"And our legs don't come off?"
And I said, "No, they don't."
And immediately, all of the other children
started asking questions, and poignant questions.
It was just as if, you know,
"We shall now open the door.
"You have passed the test.
You may come in."
And what he wanted to do
was to take all of that that he learned
in television work,
add to that the sense of ministry
and the child development background.
It became Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
A neighborhood was a place
where, at times that you felt worried,
scared, unsafe,
would take care of you,
would provide understanding, safety.
That's what the neighborhood was for Fred.
Television has the chance
of building a real community...
out of an entire country.
The neighborhood is not a fantasy place
where all these different people got together
and everything was happily ever after.
When you have diverse people together
with their different opinions,
you have conflict.
And that's what happens in the neighborhood.
You have conflict, real conflict.
Halt, trolley.
Give me your name, rank and serial number.
"King Friday XIII
"establishes border guard.
King against change."
The parallels between what is happening in the real world
and what is happening inside the neighborhood
are uncanny and undeniable.
In 1968, the country is at war.
He can go on fighting
longer than we can.
Frightened, meow, frightened, meow.
There's nothing to be frightened about
until somebody starts shooting, Henrietta.
Meow, meow, start shooting, meow!
That was the first time he knew that he was
producing something for a national audience.
King Friday was really irritated
that people were changing things.
So his reaction as the authority
was to build a wall.
♪ Oh, it's very sharp, it's very sharp ♪
♪ Oh, my, barbed wire is very sharp ♪
Remember our battle cry, Edgar?
Down with the changers!
♪ Down with the changers, down with the changers ♪
♪ We don't want anything to change ♪
- 'Cause we're on top. - That's right.
♪ 'Cause we're ♪
♪ At least, you're, on top ♪
I can't believe what a broad area we covered.
- Oh, dear. - Edgar, Edgar,
wh-what do you think he means by "any trouble"?
Fred didn't want you ad-libbing,
putzing around with the words,
because he was always trying to get a message across
in every show.
I want there to be peace in this neighborhood.
It's been a hard time for everyone.
Well, I really do hope that what you say will work.
Do you have the tags on the bottom?
Yes, I... I put 'em on.
- Look, see if you like them. - Good.
"Love," this one says.
And then we float them over into the castle
so that Great Uncle Friday will know
that the whole neighborhood wants peace.
Paratroopers!
Fire the cannon!
Hold it, King Friday.
- Well, what is it? - They're not paratroopers.
They're... They're messages of peace.
Look at this: "Tenderness."
Messages of peace?
"Peaceful co-existence."
- Wait. - You see, that one was...
They're peaceful messages, sir.
Let us stop all fighting.
Stop all fighting now.
Oh, superb! Superb!
Meow, wonderful, meow.
That was the first week.
That's how it got started.
♪ It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood ♪
♪ A beautiful day for a neighbor ♪
♪ Would you be mine? ♪
♪ Could you be mine? ♪
From the early days
of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
until the end of that program, he came in the door
every day the same way.
Hi.
Hello.
And he changed to the sweater
to give a sense that we are gonna have
this relaxing time together.
Whoop.
Change the shoes.
Some food for the fish.
Picture picture on the wall,
would you kindly tell us all,
is Mr. McFeely on his way here?
My job was to be the prop person.
And then he said, "Oh,
"I know you've done some... some acting.
"I'd like you to play the character
of the delivery man."
I must go off, Mr. Rogers.
I have a lot of deliveries today in the neighborhood.
So I became Mr. McFeely on the spot.
The trolley left for its house
into the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.
Boomerang, toomerang, soomerang!
Anything could happen in Make-Believe.
Oh!
But Make-Believe was not real.
I mean, there was a distinction.
Fred never appeared in Make-Believe.
Actors did. The puppets did.
There's the clock
where Daniel Striped Tiger lives.
Next you see King Friday XIII's castle.
King Friday XIII is one of the few remaining
benevolent despots.
These characters are... Were people in his life.
Queen Sara
would obviously be my mom.
I'd just like to say
what a fine person my husband is.
Why, Sara.
None of us like to think of Lady Elaine
as my aunt, but we wonder about that.
In the beginning, she was a witch.
I heard that.
Here's a squirt.
What can I say?
In a beautiful tree
lived X the Owl and Henrietta Pussycat.
Meow, meow, beautiful day, meow, meow, neighborhood.
And then, at the end of every program,
we came back to Fred's television house.
And to help children understand all of these experiences,
he put that into a song.
♪ I like you as you are ♪
♪ Exactly and precisely ♪
♪ I think you turned out nicely ♪
♪ And I like you as you are ♪
And children need to hear that.
I don't think that anybody can grow
unless he really is accepted exactly as he is.
I think he was one of those people
who would do their work seriously
and they hope that someone will pick up on the seriousness
of what they're about.
There were times when he thought,
"Will people ever understand that I'm not just a klutzy guy
"who's fumbling around in a '50s living room with...
with weird curtains?"
WGBH in Boston decided to have
something called a Mr. Rogers day.
There was just a woman in... in GBH
who was in their PR department who loved the program,
and I think her colleagues said...
You know, I think they thought it was really simple,
kind of '50s, square.
And she said, "No, I really want to bring him here,
and I want families to be able to come and see him."
And the line to get in
was blocks and blocks long
before they even opened the doors.
And the word got around really quickly
that there's something going on with this guy.
Mr. Rogers, Mr. Rogers.
I like you as you are.
A little boy came up
to him and said, "Mr. Rogers, how did you get out?"
And so he talked to the little boy,
explained what television was all about.
And the little boy's just
taking it all in, going, "Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm."
And he... When Fred finished, he said...
The little boy said,
"How are you gonna get back in?"
There was a whole
spiritual dimension to his work in the television business
to be inclusive.
He did this without ever
identifying himself as a minister.
He didn't wear a collar. He wore a sweater.
And he preached in that context
in a way more effective than anyone I've ever seen,
because it wasn't a sermon like, uh, an oratorical thing.
It was a communication right into their hearts.
He was a life-long registered Republican,
and if you look at the values that Mr. Rogers represented,
it's influenced by his faith.
His Christianity was this kind of wide open Christianity
that was accepting thinking from all other places
while never departing from the Christian faith.
Fred's theology was:
Love your neighbor and love yourself.
And he saw that communication
as the most deeply spiritual thing
that he could be doing.
When I look at the camera,
I think of one person.
Not any specific person, but one person.
It's very, very personal.
The space between the television screen
and whoever happens to be receiving it,
I consider that very holy ground.
A lot happens.
A lot happens there.
For somebody who was in television,
he was just... He hated television.
Here, buddy. It's all yours.
Wow, look at this!
Hey! What about me?
In this country, the child
is appreciated for what he will be.
He will be a great consumer someday.
The quicker we can get them to go out and buy, the better.
There's so much of that in this country.
Mr. Ellison, I think you have felt strongly
about some aspects of this.
Public television could make a contribution.
As the American people
becomes aware of itself, it discovers itself.
We do not know as much as we should know
about who we are, what we are and how we differ.
How will man use his miracles?
The answer just begins with public television.
We want most of all
to enrich man's spirit,
and that is the purpose of this act.
And then Nixon became president,
and he wanted to cut the funding.
The beginnings of PBS
was gonna probably be dismantled by Richard Nixon,
whose approach to media was to threaten stations
if they didn't behave politically.
Nixon had a problem with his budget.
He had to find money for the Vietnam war.
It wasn't a lot of money in today's terms,
but he wanted to cut the budget.
In the midst of all this,
Fred Rogers gets
to go before Congress,
argue for $20 million of funding
to sort of solidify PBS,
in front of John Pastore,
who's a senator who had already
sort of made his congressional bones
by attacking television.
This is going to be a thorough hearing.
This is going to be a hearing not to reach for a headline,
but to reach for a result.
There had been two days of hearings,
and he hasn't been very impressed.
If you'd been watching those hearings
and you had to bet on whether or not
PBS was going to keep going... no.
That educational television should permanently
struggle for subsistence is intolerable.
All right, who's the next witness?
Senator Pastore told the group,
"I've heard everybody read your testimonies.
"I don't want anyone to read anymore.
I'm tired of hearing the reading."
When I heard about that, I thought, "Uh-oh, Fred."
All right, Rogers, you've got the floor.
- May I use this? - And I could hear
in his voice the... the nerves.
Senator Pastore,
this is a philosophical statement
and would take about ten minutes to read.
So I'll not do that. Uh...
One of the first things that a child learns
in a healthy family is trust.
And I trust what you have said, that you will read this.
It's very important to me.
I care deeply about children.
My first children...
Will it make you happy if you read it?
I'd just like to talk about it,
- if it's all right. - All right, sir.
This is what I give.
I give an expression of care every day to each child
to help him realize that he is unique.
I end the program by saying,
"You've made this day a special day
"by just your being you.
"There's no person in the whole world like you.
And I like you just the way you are."
And I feel that if we in public television
can only make it clear
that feelings are mentionable and manageable,
we will have done a great service.
Uh, could I tell you the words
of one of the songs, which I feel is very important?
Yes.
This has to do with that good feeling of control,
which I feel that...
That children need to know is there.
And it starts out, "What do you do with the mad that you feel?"
And that first line came straight from a child.
I work with children, doing puppets in...
In very personal communication with small groups.
"What do you do with the mad that you feel
"when you feel so mad you could bite?
"When the whole wide world seems oh so wrong
"and nothing you do seems very right?
"It's great to be able to stop
"when you've planned a thing that's wrong
"and be able to do something else instead
"and think this song.
"I can stop when I want to, can stop when I wish,
"can stop, stop, stop anytime.
"Know that there's something deep inside
that helps us become what we can."
I think it's wonderful. I think it's wonderful.
Looks like you just earned the $20 million.
♪ Zoopity doo bee doo ♪
♪ A zoopity doo bee doo ♪
Fred Rogers is easily the star of the show,
and if children had votes,
public television would be on easy street tomorrow.
♪ Do do do do Da do da do ♪
♪ Da do da do Da do bee do wee ♪
Oh, wow.
Everything just sort of exploded.
You know, suddenly there was press
beating a path to our door.
Good evening. I was in Pittsburgh
a few days ago
doing a bit of investigative reporting
on a man named Fred Rogers.
Meow, meow, meow, meow.
Wonderful. Meow!
Mr. Rogers does ten different voices
for ten different puppets.
Well, a copperhead is poisonous, is it not?
He writes, he's the producer,
he is the chief performer, and he is a marvel.
Fred Rogers, as best I can tell,
has managed to escape the calloused, the embittered,
the negative aspects of being a public performer.
He is doing the one thing in the world
that he wishes to do, and he is by any definition a happy man.
I sometimes wonder myself how he ticked.
It's a little tough for me to have the...
Almost the second Christ as my dad.
If we were at the dinner table
and he would want to say something
that wasn't necessarily
Mr. Rogers-like, he would say it in
Lady Elaine Fairchilde's voice.
Get out here, Friday.
I need to speak with you.
That was our cue that this is the alter-ego
speaking now, you know,
and just letting off a little steam.
He and I both had childhoods
that you weren't allowed to be angry.
You weren't allowed to show your anger.
And we were never able to do it.
It scared us.
Music was my first language.
I was scared to use words.
I didn't want to be a bad boy.
I didn't want to tell people that I was angry.
But I could show it through...
The way I would play on the piano.
I could literally laugh or cry
or be very angry through the ends of my fingers.
I've always felt that you were someone who could understand
the deep feelings or thoughts of people.
Well, it took me so long to get tame.
I try to understand how everybody else
is working at it.
Sometimes it isn't easy.
No, but it's worth a try.
Daniel was pretty much Fred.
He did all the voices, but, uh...
But I think Daniel was the real Fred.
Maybe I could talk about clocks
and loving...
And things like that.
A, b, c, d,
f, g, j, k,
l, m, s...
Oh, Lady Aberlin, I just can't go to school tomorrow.
Why not, Daniel?
Because I don't know everything.
Daniel is articulating
the fears and anxieties and feelings
that Fred had as a child,
but that many children have.
He never forgot how vulnerable it was to be a kid.
You know, you're this little thing.
Everything else in the world is bigger than you are,
and you have to learn everything
that helps you get through in life.
I think that it just never left him.
Whatever those scars of his life were,
he wanted to help heal that wound, maybe?
It's a lot easier, even as an adult,
for me to have Daniel say...
"I'm really scared.
Do you think maybe you could give me a hug?"
You know?
That would be hard for me to say, "I'm really scared.
Do you think you could give me a hug?"
So the difference from the... From here to here,
that doesn't seem very far, but...
It was efficacious, to say the least.
A car ran over the jaw of your cat?
- Mm-hmm. - And what happened?
It was bleeding.
Oh.
They tried and fixed it,
but they fixed it for a half a day,
but then it died.
- But then it died? - Mm-hmm.
Oh, I think that's scary.
All you had to do was see Fred
inhabit Daniel to...
really kind of figure it out.
I mean, they were symbiotic.
As strange as it is to see a grown man
have a symbiotic relationship with kind of a dingy, you know,
worn-out little sock puppet, he definitely had that.
Would you give me a hug?
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
'Cause I needed that.
I better go back in the case, Mr. Rogers.
Okay, Daniel.
He's really nice.
You could talk to him.
Okay, Daniel.
Just a minute. I want to show you something.
Okay.
Wonder what.
It's a balloon.
Oh, a balloon.
Could you blow it up for me?
Surely.
So, this is the first year
of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
Daniel Striped Tiger is there with Lady Aberlin,
asking her to blow a balloon up
and then let the air out.
You wonder why this is in there.
Uh, they can't hear. Can you hear on any of these?
There's something I want to ask you.
What does "assassination" mean?
What happened? Do you know?
Somebody said he's been shot.
Let's roll some videotape on this out here, friends.
Ha-have you heard that word a lot today?
Yes.
And I didn't know what it meant.
Well...
It means...
Somebody getting killed...
in a... A sort of surprise way.
That's what happened, you know.
That man killed that other man.
A lot of people are sad and scared about it, you know.
I'd rather talk about it some other day.
Whenever you like.
I felt that I had to speak
to the families of our country about grief.
A plea not to leave the children isolated
and at the mercy of their own fantasies
of loss and destruction.
Children have very deep feelings
just the way parents do,
just the way everybody does.
And our striving to understand those feelings
and to better respond to them
is what I feel is a most important task in our world.
He realized that if he really wanted
to communicate, the most important thing
is to listen.
'Cause there's so many people who will just
lump 'em all together and say, "Hey, kids, come along.
We'll see the next cartoon."
And they couldn't care less about
what that cartoon is saying to the child
about such things as human dignity.
♪ Tra-la-la, la-la-la-la ♪
Remember what was happening
for children's television.
It was speeding up.
Fred was pretty radical in television for that day
in that he used time
totally differently.
To Fred, silence
was his delight.
Fred took an egg timer and said,
"Do you want to know how long a minute is?
Here. We're going to show you."
And we just sat there for the whole minute.
There's a lot of slow space.
There's no wasted space.
In.
Out.
I think silence is one of the greatest gifts
that we have.
His questions are direct,
simple, short,
and then he waits.
He interviewed me, and he put his face
about three inches away from my face,
says, "It's so nice
to see you and to be with you."
It scared the living daylights out of me.
But I realized this is what children do with adults.
And sometimes after
they answer, he doesn't say anything else.
So they say a little bit more.
It's-it's a... it's a perfect interviewing trick.
Very funny. Very funny.
Very funny.
I'm not falling for it.
Very good.
Handyman Negri and Officer Clemmons, I presume.
Correct as always, your highness.
Could we take a close look
at, uh, your badge here, Officer Clemmons?
My friends, I think, can read it.
P-o-l-i-c-e.
I have always felt policemen to be
the most dangerous person in the neighborhood.
So, to have me playing a police officer,
I was tremendously hesitant.
But there was something reluctant about Fred to let go.
And I said, "Mr. Rogers,
"I would be very happy to be on your program
as long as it doesn't interfere with my singing."
♪ We've had it and now it can go ♪
♪ We don't want the snow anymore ♪
And he teased me.
He teased me about that for 20 years.
He'd say, "Officer Clemmons,
"are we interfering with your career?
Are we interfering?"
He was relentless.
But he also told me, he said,
"That was the moment I loved you."
He said, "Because you were not going to kiss my ass."
Those are Mr. Rogers' words.
Mm, that feels good.
Oh, there's Officer Clemmons.
Hi, Officer Clemmons. Come in.
Hello, Mr. Rogers. How are you?
Come on. Why don't you sit down?
Oh, sure. Just for a moment.
It's so warm, I was just, uh,
putting some water on my feet.
Oh, it sure is.
Would you like to join me?
That looks awfully enjoyable,
but I don't have a towel or anything.
Oh, you share mine.
Okay, sure.
Around the country, they didn't want black people
to come and swim in their swimming pools.
And Fred said, "That is absolutely ridiculous."
Today, trouble under a noon sun.
Negroes and white rabbis marched to a segregated hotel
with these results.
The manager, James Brock,
told them to get off his private property,
tossed, uh, cleaning chemicals inside the pool
in an effort to get the negroes to leave.
My being on the program was a statement for Fred.
Cool water on a hot day.
I think that will is the great
unseen and unacknowledged ingredient in Fred's story.
The level of will that this guy brought
to really almost all phases of his life,
physical and spiritual...
there's no better manifestation of that than...
143.
Is that your address here?
Oh, no.
It-it means something special.
1-4-3?
Mm-hmm. You see,
"I" is one letter,
and "love"... l-o-v-e... is four letters,
and "you"... y-o-u... is three letters.
Fred would go to the Pittsburgh Athletic Club,
and he swam a mile.
He swam at a unhurried
but deliberate and determined pace.
And then he got on the scale,
and the needle of the scale jumped to 143.
And he came off it
with kind of a little smile on his face,
and he told me that he had weighed 143 pounds
every day of his life since, like,
the late '50s or early '60s.
Now, I've thought about this a lot.
What, that... that 143-pound thing drives me insane.
Try that.
I can't do that.
In Fred's private numerology,
"I love you" is "1-4-3."
So, when the needle jumps to 143,
there's, like, this confirming quality.
There are so many weird things
that I'm not gonna tell you.
No.
Freddy was like the little rich kid
that lived in the big house.
And we were all the...
The goofball kids that lived across the alley.
We could be ourselves around Fred.
We were crazies.
We all had long hair, and we were always
having fun, we were always making jokes.
♪ It's such a good... ♪
Those aren't mine.
Whose are these?
If we ever saw a camera laying around,
we'd grab it, I'd pull my pants down,
I'd take a picture of my ass and put their camera back.
And, like, then it was film, so, like, three weeks later,
you'd go to the fotomat,
and you'd get your pictures back,
and there's Aunt Judy, and there's Uncle Fred,
and there's some guy's ass, you know.
And one day, Fred brought his camera into the studio,
and he was taking pictures with it.
And we went behind the set, took a picture of my butt
and put his camera back.
He never said anything, and, like, months later...
I think it was around Christmastime...
he said to somebody, "Did you give Nick his present?"
And it was a poster of that picture
of me and my butt.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
- Did you make these yourself? - Mm-hmm.
I... I, um...
I thought... I-I thought of X the Owl,
so I... so I, um...
I drew him in his house and his little door.
Oh, these are real treasures.
- Thank you very much. - You're welcome.
Would you like to see X the Owl?
You're a little happy.
That makes you just a little bit happy, huh?
Oh, hello there.
Hello, everybody.
Hi.
I'm X the Owl.
I hear you drew a picture of me.
This is a book
on all of the different tapes that we have.
Here are the tapes. Here.
At that point, he thought
he had done enough programs
that they could be repeated.
Those are all different visits...
Television visits that we have on tape.
He was writing, he was hosting,
he was singing, he was composing.
And it took a lot out of him.
I think he wanted a breather.
Well, next week, we'll start to show all of these visits
so everybody can see them the whole way through.
Well, I'll look forward to that.
Let's take a look at this one.
When you think about all of those episodes,
there's only so many stories you can tell, right?
What's in the future for Fred Rogers?
I understand that you are ceasing production this spring
of the Neighborhood shows.
Well, it's going to give us time to make some things
that I've wanted to do for a long time.
- Hi, Katie. - Hi, Fred.
And, John, wait till you see this quilt.
He wanted to do some prime-time stuff
for adults, and so he got funding to do a show
called Old Friends... New friends.
I wonder what it is that makes one person
push on in the face of difficulty
and makes someone else crumble in helplessness.
What does tomorrow feel like?
That big. I feel...
I feel that big.
There's no feeling for tomorrow.
Feeling is dead for me in here.
He was incredibly open.
He was scarily open.
He wanted to speak to adults.
He kind of put the puppets away.
But have you watched some of these?
The feeling that...
This instrument is a place,
that it is a country,
that it's somewhere that you go
to say something.
What... what does this
have to do with our world?
I don't know any store that's like this.
Any television program that's like this.
A flower is like this.
A child is like this.
Nobody but Fred would have thought
of doing that for adults.
Take number 19.
Thank you for your poems and your thoughts
about loving poetry and music.
You really inspired us to make this program.
I'll be with you next time.
But he wasn't making
the kind of connections with adults on television
that he thought he might be able to make.
I remember opening the paper
and reading about a child
jumping off a roof with a towel around his neck
because he was playing Superman.
And there had been a lot of stories like that.
Some children died because of the injuries.
I read it to Fred.
It hit him, because he thought he had covered
all that there was to say in child development,
but this was new.
Fred didn't become angry a lot,
but he just became so angry about the fact
that people would mislead a small child.
And angry that it was his medium
that was doing this.
Yeah, Superman.
I am tired of hearing people who have long ago
set aside the concerns of childhood,
telling everybody what children really need.
I'll tell you what children need.
They need adults who will protect them
from the ever-ready molders of their world.
That was the moment Fred said,
"I wonder if we could do a week on superheroes,
talking about the pretend-ness of it."
Very quickly,
we came back with the show.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, careful, Ana.
- I don't want you to... - I think I'm flying.
- I am! I'm flying! - No, you're falling!
What is going on here?
Oh, Ana was trying to fly.
I was using my super-skirt,
and I was going through the air.
Yes, but you were going down, and you might have gotten hurt.
That's right, Ana.
You have to be really careful
with super-things.
He was cool with every kid.
That's the whole thing. I mean, there were little...
Kids that were... They were little bastards.
They were just rowdy, and Fred never said,
"This kid's a dick. Get him out of here."
You know, I mean, I sure would've.
Fred used to say
that the outside world of children's lives
has changed, but their insides haven't.
He realized that his work wasn't through.
I'm Fred Rogers, and I'd like to talk
with you about Make-Believe.
When it goes to the next level
is in the 1980s when he goes
to the theme weeks.
I mean, to... to do
a week on death...
"Oh, hi, kids.
We're gonna do a week on death."
On divorce.
Some people get married, and after a while,
they're so unhappy with each other
that they don't want to be married anymore.
On children getting lost.
Man, that's guts.
Help! Help, help!
Help, please, everybody!
There's a piece of paper that I accidentally ran into.
And he typed in this little sheet of paper
about how he couldn't do it,
that he didn't think he was up to the task.
"Am I kidding myself
"that I'm able to write a script again?
"Am I really just whistling Dixie?
"I wonder.
"If I don't get down to it, I'll never really know.
"Why don't I trust myself?
"After all these years,
"it's just as bad as ever.
"The hour cometh, and now is when I've got to do it.
"Get to it, Fred. Get to it.
"But don't let anybody ever tell anybody else
"that it was easy.
It wasn't."
The time that I was with him
going on a New York City subway, all the children
in that crowded subway car
began singing the Neighborhood song.
♪ I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie ♪
♪ To the hip hip hop and you don't stop ♪
♪ The rock it to the bang bang boogie ♪
♪ Say up jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat ♪
♪ Now, what you hear is not a test ♪
♪ I'm rapping to the beat ♪
He might as well have been an animated figure
stepped into real life.
Could I try that?
I brought my skates with me.
I can try.
Whoa.
♪ But first, I gotta bang bang the boogie to the boogie ♪
♪ Say up jump the boogie to the bang ♪
- What else do you like to do? - Moonwalk.
- Moonwalk? - You got it. Yeah.
People thought he was
such an important American figure,
they wanted him to speak out
on the issues of the day.
And so Fred grew pretty comfortably
into more of a public role.
You know, the Earth is a name
for the place where everybody lives.
And the moon
is the name for the place
where the astronauts go.
Every time we went through
a national or international tragedy,
my impulse was always to call Fred
and put him on the radio.
What shall we tell our children
about the things that are in the news
that seem so difficult, so tragic?
Pilot Mike Smith,
followed by Christa McAuliffe, teacher in space.
Christa has been rehearsing
the lessons she'll teach from space.
Good morning.
This is Christa McAuliffe, live from the Challenger.
The lessons will be seen
nationwide on public television.
Five, four, three...
Two, one...
And liftoff!
Liftoff of the 25th space shuttle mission,
and it has cleared the tower.
Challenger, go at throttle up.
Roger. Go at throttle up.
God, no!
How do we put it to children
so they will understand?
And part of Fred's answer was always to tell children
that we, the parents, would take care of them.
Sometimes I found that a difficult message myself
as the parent of a young child.
Sometimes I felt I was lying.
I knew that there were things in this world
that I couldn't protect my child from.
Sometimes we need to struggle
with a tragedy to feel the gravity of love.
Love is what keeps us together and afloat.
♪ It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood ♪
♪ A beautiful day for a neighbor ♪
♪ Would you be mine? ♪
You know, it must be tough to be Fred Rogers...
with your mission in mind
and then to have parodies.
♪ I always want to live in a house like yours, my friend ♪
♪ Maybe when there's nobody home, I'll break in ♪
♪ I married a woman who said she was rich ♪
♪ Spent all our money, walked out on the bitch ♪
♪ Would you be my, won't you be my ♪
♪ Won't you be my neighbor? ♪
Eddie Murphy did that
Mister Robinson's Neighborhood,
and I remember meeting him,
and he just threw his arms around me
the first time he saw me,
and he said, "The real Mr. Rogers."
That's, uh, Mr. Rogers there in the, uh...
- On the left. - On the left, yeah.
Uh, now, how do you react to that?
Well, some of them aren't very funny.
But I think that, uh... That a lot of them
are done with real kindness
- in their hearts. - Mm-hmm.
I'm moving to a new neighborhood
where I've made a... A new friend.
Can you say "hooker"?
There were some that...
Were not as kind
in nature, and if they made fun of the philosophy,
that was the only thing
that offended him, I think.
The battle of the PBS stars.
The crowd is literally buzzing with excitement
as Mr. Rogers enters the ring.
Oh, look out there, Fred!
Fred had such a great sense of humor,
for the most part.
There's Child, obviously in shape
- and ready for this fight. - Thank you.
But what about Rogers?
Experts have cast aspersions on his manhood itself.
Fred would watch them with the rest of us,
and everybody would be laughing, and I just wonder...
If a little bit of fat Freddy came back.
Just before getting to adolescence,
he didn't have an easy time making friends, I don't think.
He got a good taste of what bullying was all about.
I've often wondered,
if there hadn't been a fat Freddy,
would there have been a Mr. Rogers?
You can feel the momentum
actually swinging toward Child.
And what just happened there?
He grabbed a puppet!
Oh, look at this!
He's hitting Child with the lovable King Friday!
And the French chef is down.
A laughter record.
Used to play one like this when I was a young boy.
You see, I felt that the adults around me
were pressuring me to be what I couldn't be yet.
"Act like a grown-up," I'd hear them say.
Well, I was afraid they'd laugh at me when I tried.
So I found a record like this,
and I could make the laughs start
and make them stop whenever I wanted to.
For someone who hated to be laughed at,
it was a good feeling to be in charge
of at least this laughter.
I think that those who would try
to make you feel less than who you are...
I think that's the greatest evil.
♪ With you, so ♪
Mm!
♪ Since we're together, we might as well say ♪
♪ Would you be mine, could you be mine? ♪
There was a wonderful quote from Fred.
Oh, that's hard.
The most important learning...
it's the ability to accept and expect mistakes
and deal with the disappointment that they bring.
Hi, neighbor.
Had a little trouble with my zipper there.
I'll get these shoes tied and then...
Try the zipper again.
And Fred also understood
that there's a deeper level.
You know something,
- Lady Aberlin? - What, Daniel?
I've been wondering about something myself.
Something about Mr. Skunk?
Something about mistakes.
What is it?
I've been wondering if I was a mistake.
If you were a mistake?
And I will tell you,
sitting in the studio listening to that, that day,
I said to myself,
"I can't believe Fred had the courage
to put that into words."
Sometimes I wonder if I'm too tame.
♪ Sometimes I wonder ♪
♪ If I'm a mistake ♪
♪ I'm not like anyone else I know ♪
♪ When I'm asleep ♪
♪ Or even awake ♪
♪ Sometimes I get to dreaming ♪
♪ That I'm just a fake ♪
♪ I'm not like anyone else ♪
♪ I think ♪
♪ You are just fine as you are ♪
You do?
♪ I really must tell you ♪
♪ I do like... ♪
Lady Aberlin is saying to Daniel
what Fred himself wanted to say,
not only to his childhood self, but to all children.
♪ You're not a fake ♪
♪ You're no mistake ♪
♪ You are my friend ♪
And then you think, "Okay, then Daniel's going to say,
'Oh, thank you. That helped me a lot.'"
♪ - I think - I wonder ♪
♪ - You are just fine as you are - If I'm a mistake ♪
♪ - I really must tell you - I'm not like anyone else ♪
And I thought to myself,
"Thank you, Fred, for reminding us
that it's not so easy to quiet a doubt."
But make it a duet
so that it's not just your fears,
but you'll hear my support.
♪ Isn't it true ♪
♪ - That the strong never break? - When you are sleeping ♪
♪ - I'm not like - When you're awake ♪
♪ - Anyone else - You're not a fake ♪
♪ - No, I'm not like - You're no mistake ♪
♪ - Anyone else - You're my friend ♪
I think you are just fine
exactly the way you are.
The way I look?
Yes.
The way I talk?
Well, yes.
The way I love?
Especially that.
Oh!
♪ Every valley ♪
♪ Every valley shall be exhalted... ♪
There were black kids watching the show.
They needed a black figure who would not let them down.
So, if I came out as gay
and there was some kind of scandal,
that would not serve the race.
I carried that all the time.
♪ The feeling you know you're alive ♪
Really nice, François.
I went to a gay bar downtown called the Play Pen.
Oh, God, did I have a lot of fun.
But somebody, uh, told the
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood people about it,
and he asked me, "Did you... Were you downtown at that bar?"
And I said, "Yes."
He said, "You can't go back there anymore."
I wanted to show this film to you.
Okay, on picture picture.
Here's Mrs. Clemmons at home.
In '68, I got married.
I'm not stupid.
There's the portrait of the king and queen.
If I came out publicly, he said,
"You cannot be on the show anymore."
The sponsors, Johnson & Johnson, and Sears,
they are not going to support an openly gay man.
Fred was not prepared to lose that market.
My marriage failed miserably.
And I discovered you can't pray it away.
Eventually, Fred came around to it.
I think François
just came a little too soon, maybe, you know?
Oh, yes. Oh, my, yes. Heavens.
Um...
You gotta forgive me for this, but I have to ask you something
that may sound impertinent, and I don't mean for it to
for a second.
Are-are...
Are you square?
I mean, are you a straight guy? I mean, you're just...
Are you really the way you are?
First of all, no, he's not gay.
I tell everyone who asks me, "No, he's not gay."
But the, uh... the other part is
I spent enough time with him that if he had the...
If there was a gay vibe, I would've picked it up.
Nope, not as far as I know.
I mean, I think that anybody who looked at Fred
looked at somebody that they couldn't compare
with anybody else.
There's something inside you
that hasn't been lost.
Thank you, Daniel.
- Your childhood. - Mm-hmm.
Okay.
I like him.
I know.
- Bye. - Bye-bye. Okay.
That was one of the things
that I responded to.
That's terrific.
Wow.
I definitely saw another way of... of being a man.
I'm sure you've heard all these rumors
about Fred being a Navy SEAL and killing people.
Was Fred a Navy SEAL?
Did Fred have tattoos?
And that, you know, he wore...
He wore the sweater
to cover the tattoos.
Fred was born a rich kid.
He didn't know how to use a screwdriver,
let alone kill a bunch of people.
That, to me, is just, like,
a classic example of people looking at Fred
in all his eccentricity and singularity,
and trying to basically say, "Well, that can't be.
He has to be this way."
The universal question about Fred is...
was he that way in real life?
And the answer is yes.
François Clemmons, hi. Welcome.
Thank you. How you doing?
- I'm fine. How are you today? - Fine.
My feet were tired, so I thought I'd just
soak them for a while in this water.
- Does it make 'em feel better? - It does.
- Would you like to try? - Sure.
On the show,
he would say, "I love you just the way you are."
One day, I said,
"Fred, were you talking to me?"
And he looked at me, and he said,
"Yes, I've been talking to you for two years,
and you finally heard me today."
And I just collapsed into his arms.
I was... I started crying. I...
That's when I knew that I loved him.
♪ There are may ways to say "I love you" ♪
♪ There are many ways to say "I care about you" ♪
No man had ever told me
that he loved me like that.
I needed to hear it all my life.
My dad never told me.
My step-father never told me.
So, from then on, he became my surrogate father.
I'm so proud of you, François.
Oh, thank you, Fred.
- Thank you. - May I help you here?
Thank you.
The people who have had
a lot of struggle in their lives,
those are the people who really impress me.
There was an interview with a little boy
by the name of Jeff Erlanger.
We wrote because Jeff was going to have a spinal fusion
and be in a... What they call a halo, uh...
- Cast. A halo cast. - Metal rim, and then cast
on his shoulders and bolted all together and...
- All the way down his trunk. - Yeah.
- We weren't sure... - He may not have
survived the surgery, and so we said, you know,
"What would you like to do?
"Uh, this is going to be a really big task for you,
"and so we want to kick it off with something
that would be really special."
Mr. Rogers?
Hey, Jeff.
- I'm glad to see you. - Hi.
Thank you very much for coming by.
Can you tell my friends what it is
that made you need this wheelchair?
Sure.
Well, when I was about seven months old,
I had, um...
I had a tumor,
and it broke the nerves
to tell my hands and legs what to do.
I see.
And I got a wheelchair
when I was four years old.
- That was your first one? - Mm-hmm.
- When you were four. - Uh-huh.
He told Jeff before they started that they would
have a chat and then sing a song together.
I think he said, "We might sing a song."
- I remember. - Yeah.
'Cause, I mean, I was sort of surprised.
"What? He's going to start singing a song?"
Well, you know, this is totally...
Not even what song.
♪ It's you I like ♪
♪ It's not the things you wear ♪
♪ It's not the way you do your hair ♪
♪ But it's you I like ♪
♪ - The way you are right now - Now. ♪
♪ The way down deep inside you ♪
♪ Not the things that hide you ♪
♪ - Not your fancy chair - Chair ♪
♪ That's just beside you ♪
♪ But it's you I like ♪
♪ Every part of you ♪
♪ Your skin, your eyes ♪
♪ Your feelings ♪
♪ Whether old or new ♪
♪ I hope that you'll remember ♪
♪ Even when ♪
♪ You're feeling blue ♪
♪ That it's you I like ♪
♪ It's really yourself ♪
♪ It's you ♪
♪ It's you... ♪
♪ I... ♪
♪ Like ♪
- And it is you I like, Jeff. - Thanks.
And there must be times when you do feel blue.
Uh-huh.
I'm not feeling blue right now, though.
Me, neither.
I'm so glad that you came today.
Thanks.
I remember asking one of the...
One of the staff people that was there,
"Well, you know, what do you think?
Did it go okay?"
"Oh, this is good. This is good."
He had his surgery.
He survived.
Certainly, Mr. Rogers had an impact on who Jeff became.
His sense of self.
You obviously have a power now.
I mean, that you wouldn't have had
when you first started the show.
Well, it might sound very ingenuous,
but I don't feel that.
Behold. These shall be your minions.
I would hope that anybody
who sets himself or herself out
to produce mass programming for children...
could have the kind of respect
of childhood that I have.
Because it's not all clowns and balloons.
What do you mean, you don't agree with me?!
Some television programs are loud and scary,
with people shooting and hitting other people.
You know, you can do something about that.
When you see scary television, you can turn it off.
We need to help our children
become more and more aware
that what is essential in life
is invisible to the eye.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
As he got older, it was
more important for him to be strong in his beliefs.
Maybe that was how he was getting his anger out.
His anger that people
didn't take him seriously.
They didn't get him.
They didn't get the depth of the show.
He started out being Daniel,
soft and quiet and shy...
developed into King Friday.
That is not correct.
Now do it again and do it perfectly.
Wasn't King Friday
a wonderful insight into his character?
His determination
and his ambitions.
As a king, I must see that the world runs smoothly.
Farewell to you both.
That gruffness was his way
of getting what he wanted across.
Fred Rogers wanted something very badly
and would do what he felt was necessary
in order to get it.
Let's take the gauntlet
and make goodness attractive
in this so-called next millennium.
That's the real...
That's the real job that we have.
I'm not talking about Pollyanna-ish kind of stuff.
I'm talking about down-to-earth,
actual goodness.
People caring for each other
in a myriad of ways,
rather than people knocking each other off all the time.
I mean, I don't find that funny at all.
What changes the world?
The only thing that ever really changes the world
is when somebody gets the idea
that love can abound
and can be shared.
You're doing a great job.
Dad never stood up and said,
"Look at what I've done. Look at this.
Isn't this wonderful?"
The only time I ever saw him come even close
to anything like that was when he did the interview
with Koko the gorilla.
Great.
That's a happy sound.
Is it?
That's a purr.
Like that?
Can you teach me how to do that?
Isn't that a nice way to welcome someone
and say that you're happy?
It's... it was a weird kind of a...
kind of a thing, but, uh...
You realize there was something kind of magical going on there.
What? Love?
"Love you," she said.
- Oh, is that...? Oh. - "Love you. Visit. Love."
- Oh. - Well, that was very nice.
Thank you, Koko.
There's so much to think about, isn't there?
Let me ask you something about what we've been discussing
- for the last three hours. - Yeah.
- Mr. Rogers and the
narcissistic society that he gave birth to
because he told every kid that they were important.
Do you believe his philosophy destroyed a generation?
This evil, evil man.
The criticism goes like this:
"You told everyone they're special.
"They don't have to do anything to earn that special.
"That's what's wrong with our country.
That's what's wrong with children today."
He didn't say, "If you want to be special,
you're gonna have to work hard."
And now all these kids are growing up,
and they're realizing, "Hey, wait a minute.
Mr. Rogers lied to me. I'm not special."
I'm sure by then Fred had heard the criticisms,
but he's not talking about entitlement.
And if you don't believe
that everyone has inherent value,
you might as well go against
the fundamental notion of Christianity
that you are the beloved son or daughter of God.
- Hi, Mr. Rogers. - Hi.
It's a pleasure to meet you.
I'm glad to meet you. Thank you.
I watched your show as a youngster.
I wasn't allowed to go to preschool
'cause I had a disability,
and my mom made me watch your show every day.
So thank you.
Bless your heart, and here you are.
Thank you for my preschool education.
And thank you for inspiring me today.
At the very end of Fred's
very last commencement speech, he said
what he meant when he'd say, "You're special."
And what that ultimately means, of course,
is that you don't ever have to do
anything sensational
for people to love you.
It is really a matter
of believing that
you're endowed by your Creator with good.
You know, there are many different ways
of saying, "I love you."
In fact, I like to think about times
when I've seen people showing their love.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Show 1765.
This is the last scene
of the last show of the last day,
the last taping day of the interior
of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
♪ It's such a good feeling ♪
♪ To know you're alive ♪
♪ It's such a happy feeling ♪
♪ You're growing inside ♪
♪ And when you wake up ♪
♪ Ready to say ♪
♪ I think I'll make a snappy new day ♪
♪ It's such a good feeling ♪
♪ A very good feeling ♪
This place has been condemned.
Oh, it's been condemned. Oh, well.
- You got two days to move out. - Okay, thanks. See you.
That was wonderful.
Years ago, it wasn't so weird
that... that somebody as nice as Fred was around.
Now there-there isn't room for a nice person on TV.
So, we must have, uh, regular reunions.
Yeah.
How about Tuesday?
Yeah, I'll have forgotten by...
About everyone by Monday, so Tuesday will...
- bring it all back. - Bring it all back.
- We did it. - We did it.
- Can you believe it? - We did it!
Ooh, mercy.
When he did stop making the programs,
I felt that he was depressed.
I mentioned it to him,
and he said,
"Well, I miss my playmates."
- Mm-hmm. - Okay.
That's fine.
Okay. Okay, slate out.
We decided to have Fred back
to do some promos about 9/11.
He was very troubled, and I said,
"Fred, what's wrong?" And he said,
"I just don't know what good these are gonna do."
And I just remember saying,
"Fred, how can you say that?"
When the horror of 9/11 really hit him,
I-I think it was a real eye-opener.
He was realizing that...
It was just so big.
It's always going to be an ongoing struggle
to overcome evil.
I remember thinking, "Okay,
"this is the time that you need to pump him up
"because he doesn't understand
"this... this is really important.
People listen to you."
Okay.
No matter what our particular job,
especially in our world today,
we all are called to be tikkun olam,
"repairers of creation."
Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are,
to bring joy and light
and hope and faith
and pardon and love
to your neighbor and to yourself.
Fred didn't like going to the doctor's office.
He had stomach problems for a long time.
I mean, for several years.
Oh, what's that right down there?
Take a look at the aquarium.
Do you see a dead fish?
A dead fish would be one that isn't swimming
or breathing or anything at all.
Look down there and see, will you?
See if you see any.
Oh, yes, right there, isn't it?
He told me that he was sick.
I played a Bach sarabande for him over the phone.
It's like sending a little loving message.
When he was very ill,
he talked a lot about dying well.
To die with the hopes in...
With the hopes intact.
Before he became comatose, he said,
"Do you think I'm a sheep?"
And we knew what he was talking about
because he had been reading in the Bible
about the last days, with the... with the judgment.
It will be decided at the end
who is a sheep and who is a goat.
And I think the need was always there for being loved,
for being capable of being loved.
There was a... A little silence,
and then I said, "Fred,
if ever there was a sheep, you're one."
Well, I suppose it's an invitation,
"Won't you be my neighbor?"
Uh, it's an invitation for...
Uh, somebody to be close to you.
You know, I think everybody longs to be loved
and longs to know that he or she is lovable.
And consequently, the greatest thing that we can do
is to help somebody know
that they're loved and capable of loving.
Across the street from Fred's funeral,
there's this hubbub, and there's all these people
holding up signs saying, "God hates fags."
And I went and talked to them
because Fred would have it no other way.
I said, "Are you condemning Fred?
"Are you saying that he was gay?
Wh-what's... what's happening?"
And they were saying that, "No, no, he just...
He-he tolerated gays."
And so they were... they were intolerant of the tolerance.
And the thing that... the thing that struck me that day,
uh, more than anything else
was the children that were there.
Children that had been drafted into doing this work,
into standing there with their parents
and holding up signs and screaming.
And those kids looked so unhappy.
Those kids looked so exhausted.
Those kids looked so ill-treated.
It was just heart-breaking.
And I... and I knew that if Fred had seen that,
that that's where his heart would have gone.
I can't think how he would feel
about the things that have come out
that seem to set us back so far.
And I wonder if he wouldn't simply
put down his tiger and just stay home,
forget about even trying.
He's not a person who would have given up,
but this is daunting.
I... I think he would be trying to mend...
Mend the...
the split.
He would be trying to find some way
to find something positive.
When I was a boy
and I would hear about something scary,
my mother would tell us,
"Always look for the people who are helping.
You'll always find somebody who's trying to help."
I think there are a lot of people
out there like Fred Rogers.
A lot more than we really want to believe.
In response to the question,
"What would Fred Rogers do?"
It's not a question that you can answer.
The most important question is:
"What are you going to do?"
From the time you were very little,
you've had people who have smiled you into smiling,
people who have talked you into talking,
sung you into singing,
loved you into loving.
When he was giving speeches, he would say,
"Now, think about somebody who's helped you along the way
"for one minute.
I'm going to time you."
Let's just take some time
to think of those extra special people.
Hmm.
Some of them may be right here.
Some may be far away.
Some may even be in heaven.
No matter where they are,
deep down, you know they've always wanted
what was best for you.
They've always cared about you beyond measure
and have encouraged you to be true
to the best within you.
Thank you.
My mother.
How I got to this point,
because it was my grandfather's doing.
There was this woman named Viola
who used to take care of me when I was little.
She was our babysitter.
I thought about Fred.
How about you?
Yeah.
Mm.
Thank you.
♪ It's such a good feeling ♪
♪ To know you're alive ♪
♪ It's such a happy feeling ♪
♪ You're growing inside ♪
♪ And when you wake up, ready to say ♪
♪ I think I'll make a snappy new day ♪
♪ It's such a good feeling ♪
♪ A very good feeling ♪
♪ The feeling you know that we're friends ♪
Please welcome Jeffrey Erlanger.
Oh, my.
Hi.
I am so glad to see you.
- Thank you. You, too. - Oh!
What a surprise.
♪ It's such a good feeling ♪
♪ To know you're alive ♪
♪ It's such a happy feeling ♪
♪ You're growing inside ♪
♪ And when you wake up, ready to say ♪
♪ I think I'll make a snappy new day ♪
♪ It's such a good feeling ♪
♪ A very good feeling ♪
♪ The feeling you know that we're friends ♪
You help to make each day a special day
by just your being yourself.
There's nobody else in the whole world
who's exactly like you.
And people can like you exactly as you are.
You are special.
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