Our Assignment from Fred Rogers - FULL DOCUMENTARY (2020)

it's such a good feeling to know you're alive but a happy feeling you're growing inside and when you wake up i think i'll make [Music] it's such a good feeling a very good day [Music] do [Music] what do you know about mr rogers that he was um sort of like a television he was on a television show and he tried to teach kindness to kids well he's not really nice and he lives in the neighborhood and he has lots of friends he was always kind to people and he was on tv well i knew that he had a tv show about daniel tiger and his neighborhood it was like about daniel tiger and his friends and there were a lot of lessons about being nice and kind to each other he's made up a lot of things like about kindness and how it's really important to the world he always says i like you just the way you are i know that he likes to be nice to people and he wants to make the world a better place he like he was all about kindness and he he just like it was like his thing and he really wanted the world to have like kindness he really thought it was a really good thing to the world my first impression was made when he was coming down to rollins college where we were in school together both of us and he was coming down from dartmouth to take a look at rollins and because he wanted to be a music major and we were asked by our professor to go and and meet him and show him around and my first impression was she's cute and my my second impression was gee he's smart and then we went over to the we went over to the college and introduced him to the prac music practice rooms and he sat down and started playing some of the tunes of the day uh we were coming to the end of the war at that time and there were lots of lots of uh pops stuff that that had we all knew and had to do it and he could play all of them and we couldn't because we were so square you know classical music and uh but while he do classical music he knew the good thing the good fun things too and i thought ah he's going to be popular and and he was when he came home from college at spring break he saw television his parents had one of the first televisions in western pennsylvania i think this is 1949 probably something like that he saw television and he was disgusted by the content on television which was very slapstick and you know television in the late 40s and 50s was mostly about selling products and the programming was often just made up on on the spot but he saw the potential of television he was struck by what he thought was this extraordinary potential for educational purposes that's the potential he saw of course television utterly and completely changed the world over the next 50 years but he saw it as as an educational tool not so much as a commercial tool so he changed his plans and he went to new york he got an internship at nbc spent about three years there did extremely well learned a lot of stuff and then he got a chance to come back to pittsburgh to wqed as the station program manager so he was supposed to be providing all the all the programming and they didn't have any programming they didn't have any money so the the the programming they would just get whatever videotape was free that they could get from the library or from uh there was one of the one of the repositories in washington had tons of film and they just get filmed for free and show it and the station manager dorothy daniels decided she wanted a children's program so fred said i'd love to do that i i love children i care about education and they started a program called the children's corner the children's corner with josie carey and fred rogers produced by wqed and it was very successful it won a national sylvania award for children's programming kids all across the region watched it but fred was unhappy with it he was very unhappy with it because he saw it as too much like the television he had seen when he first encountered a television set and he thought it's fun it's entertaining it's not educating these kids and it really really bothered him and aided him and he he then was going to the seminary becoming a presbyterian minister and one of his teachers at the seminary said to him what what congregation are you headed for meaning what church and fred said oh i want to have a ministry to children on television and this teacher said well that ain't going to happen that's a crazy idea but if you're interested in children you have to go over to the university of pittsburgh and see dr margaret mcfarland because she's running one of the probably the best centers on on research into early childhood education in america which was true i mean benjamin spock was there barry brazelton was there the the great philosopher eric erickson was there at pitt they were all at pit at that time and fred thanks to this teacher got dropped into the middle of that that gave him the rigor the academics the the background to produce excellent television margaret mcfarlane just poured all of this great information and that's the early 1950s or mid 1950s when early childhood education was just developing i mean if you said early childhood education to somebody back then they thought you meant kindergarten they didn't read they didn't realize it's two and three-year-olds that need education and then what fred gave back to those academics was when any other figure in america he taught america about early childhood he taught america how important early childhood is because he was talking to the parents as well as the children and so it was a great moment i mean without fred rogers i don't think that the early childhood education movement would have come to where it's come today the summer that i graduated while i was waiting to hear from graduate schools i wandered around pittsburgh thinking about what i might be able to do i went to wqed there were no jobs there but the man who interviewed me suggested i go to fred rogers for some advice what did fred rogers say this was before mr rogers neighborhood it was 1965. he said if you're really interested in children's television why don't you think about a master's degree he didn't say in tv production or communication he said why don't you think about a master's degree in child development and he suggested that i do it at the university of pittsburgh where he also had trained so it made sense to me i was in graduate school he got funding from mr rogers neighborhood and he asked if i would help once he had the confidence after the children's corner once he had the confidence with the academics with whom he worked at pitt to believe that he could make truly excellent television his mind just took off and the people who worked with him would say they could never predict what he was going to do they could never predict that it was going to always surprise them so that you know there is something innate as well as what he learned that made him creative i think that when you work in a company where everything is based around one person you know fred wrote the scripts he wrote the music he did the puppetry all of those things and he had he had this sense of what he wanted to have done so the challenge was always to take that message and figure out creative ways to deliver it to the world and particularly deliver it to the young kids in our audience so that that was the main challenge i mean and within that it was let's make sure that we use language that kids can understand let's make sure that these that the actors understand how to manipulate a puppet if they were asked to do that or the props let's make sure that we do pieces that you know we visit people that are interesting to kids that give them an idea of all the wonderful ways you can express yourself so it was always just thinking about how to um deliver that message to the world i was well into producing it before i just i think had this epiphany one day in the studio i'm thinking this is so cool this is this is something that is very special but it took me a long time to really bring it to my heart it's a beautiful day in this neighborhood a beautiful day for a neighbor would you be mine would you be mine when i was in the studio on that first day a neighborly day for a beauty i knew there was something really important about what fred rogers was doing see because i was at the time i was still in graduate school we actually were taping at night because of johnny costa's schedule he was working at kdka at the time and could only be available at night so i was in graduate school in the daytime and i was learning all this complex child development theory what does trust me what does ritual mean transition how do you help children with aggression how do you help them with fears how do you help them with the difference between make-believe and reality and here that first night even in the studio i could sense that what fred was offering was something so grounded in child development so real and so important that it had to make a difference it had to really matter and i was thrilled to be a part of it even from the very beginning i knew it was right he was a producer of 900 shows he also was he wasn't the director he had a director but anytime things weren't going his way he became the director he was the songwriter he was the scriptwriter he played the piano he did all the puppets he he hosted the show at the beginning this is you can't do that and just be a nice guy you've got to have a really depth of character that's extraordinary and i think that's what most people don't fully understand even people here in pittsburgh who knew him and um and tended still to sort of think of him because he was so direct and and sweet and sort of seemed a little bit innocent uh he wasn't he was very complex and and um it's what i really can't as i did the research it's one of the things i really came to love about it please won't you be my neighbor my neighbor i have something to show you what made fred uh and mr rogers neighborhood be such a popular program is that he was the one person that talked to those kids sincerely you know he believed what he was saying and so they believed what he was saying he was talking right into the camera and he was talking to you you know you're a little kid at home you don't realize that there are thousands of other kids watching the show at the same time he became your friend he became that uncle that dad that big brother that neighbor who you trusted and so i think that's what's given it its longevity that's what people now are realizing why they liked mr rogers when they were little he was their friend you know i never did crack that code how he managed on television to be personal with children early on when he was a producer in new york he spent some time producing a show called the gabby hayes show he was actually a new yorker but he pretended to be a western figure he was sort of in the roy rogers lone ranger era and gabby hayes had a children's show where he pretended to be uh a western cowboy well howdy buckaroos this your old pal gabby hayes coming at you with another one of them rip roaring western yarns yes siree bob and fred questioned gabby hayes a lot about how he managed to deal with the camera because the camera seemed so impersonal so almost off-putting and gabby hayes said freddie when you're looking at the camera all you see is one little buckaroo that's all you see and you just make sure that camera looks like one little buckaroo and you're talking to that one little buckaroo and fred cited that often by explaining how he achieved what he did and i think he he achieved it over the years i think he he his conception of mr rogers neighborhood really started in the late 1950s but he didn't get it on national television until 1968 he had a lot of years that he was working on it but there's a certain magic to the fact that he can be on television and he's only talking to you and there's not a lot of people on television you get that feeling from hello television neighbor i'm glad we're together today i wondered if you might know what this would be a little box with some things in it and this one of the other challenges of the neighborhood was just helping fred feel comfortable in front of the camera i mean i know that it looks like he's talking to you and you're that kid at home watching and you feel like he's talking just to me but he worked really hard to make that time conversational every word pretty much for the most part when he was talking to those kids was scripted so that it was meaningful and it was honest and so that part that's taped in his house um was the hardest for him to do every person you meet has something that's special about him or her you know it's a good feeling to know that about others and about yourself i think i'll just wear these shoes you know he loved doing the puppets but making those scenes in the house were challenges just because he wanted to get it right there was a little boy that he met in new york in a hotel and the little boy came up to him with big white eyes and said mr rogers how did you get out and and that's that was the mostly the feeling for a young child how did he get out of that box and he explained it to the little boy who listened carefully and and he he would not as as fred told everything about and at the end he said how are you going to get back in so so he was he was puzzled about it there was a boy whose name is jeff erlinger and you may have seen this and he he was multiply disabled he was in a wheelchair and fred had met him about six months earlier in milwaukee we were in milwaukee doing an event and jeff came to it with his parents and i set up a breakfast so jeff could meet fred a big fan we came back to pittsburgh and about six months later fred wanted to do a program about talking about disabilities and he said i want to use jeff and the producers said we can find somebody here who's in a wheelchair no no i met jeff and he's going to be the perfect person to talk to me about this scene it's a very fancy machine but but you're the one who makes it good right did it take a long time to learn how no not really i had other wheelchairs and that only took my first work wheelchair only took me about a day to learn how to use it see that's wonderful it was absolutely not edited it was one take and all that fred said to the parents and to the crew was i'm going to ask him some questions i'm going to ask him about his wheelchair and we might sing a song and that's all anybody knew about it he said to jeff before they start taping let's just talk about what we're feeling i'll ask some questions to you and just you can tell me what you feel and he talked about the wheelchair sometimes when there's somebody in a wheelchair or somebody has a disability you talk about everything but that and fred asked him about what he felt about his wheelchair and he had him describe why he's using his wheelchair then they sang a song together do you know that song that i sometimes sing called it's you i like uh-huh i'd like to sing that to you and with you okay sure 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 the way down deep inside you not the things that hide you not your fancy chair and the that fred they both had for each other but over and above all of that fred didn't have to say oh let's do a segment on disabilities you just did it it was it was a natural conversation and it came out it was perfect and i think not only is it a perfect scene but without saying much the viewer caught that that it's you i like it i like you know the important thing that the behind the scenes story is that it wasn't it wasn't really scripted at all it just was what it was and it was just so genuine and so real and um i know that fred wrote it for a week about divorce and it was you might say what does that have to do with divorce and so one of fred's messages about that week was some things can be fixed and some things can't and so you know jeff had many things that challenges in his life physically and uh and emotionally too i'm sure but the fact that he was never going to get out of that wheelchair so it couldn't be fixed but he had a you know a wonderful outlook on life and a wonderful life not because of it but in spite of it there were moments like that that gave you that humanness that just kind of resonated the humanness and caring about each other and the kindness to each other it was so real between them and it has so many layers of messages about who we are with each other because it's so honest and so authentic i think the one that resonates the most to me is we did a week about mistakes and there's a scene where daniel striped tiger is telling betty aberland lady avalon that he thinks he's a mistake and they do this beautiful duet that fred wrote he sings his song she sing a song called i think i'm a mistake and she sings her song that you're just fine then they sing them together our pink and our wild i'm very small and quite tame most of the time and so to me that really condenses the essence of mr rogers neighborhood because it's about self building self-esteem which we don't often have it's about nobody's a mistake that everybody it has their own unique gifts to give to this world and it takes advantage of his uh not only his script writing skills but his composition skills and his music um skills so it kind of combines everything into this just beautiful five or six minute piece in the neighborhood of making [Music] i wonder if i are just fine as you are i'm not supposed to be scared sometimes i cry and sometimes i shake wondering isn't it true that the strong never break i'm not lying anyone else [Music] and then there were the times with the famous people around yo yo ma or wynton marsalis and it's that's why it's hard to name a favorite because there are so many layers of things that were remarkable in mr roger's neighborhood then and the little moments when fred would hold out a plant and say let's take a really close look at this and let us just immerse ourselves in the visual of this magnificent piece of the world isn't that a beautiful plant that's called an african violet plant did you ever take a lot of time to look at a flower let's just take a long look at these [Music] 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 i love the episode on death where the fish dies and the the fish is floating at the bottom of the tank and fred explains to the children what a fish that has died looks like and then he says well he's been told that sometimes if you put a little salt in the water it can revive the fish and he tries that and it doesn't work and he takes the fish out and he takes the fish outside the house to the little garden and he gives it a burial when i was very young i had a dog that i loved very much her name was mitzi and she got to be old and she died and i was very sad when she died because she and i were good pals and all during the course of that part of the tape the theme of the program is on deaf and and by the way uh a television writer producer personality that fred was doing a program on death for little children nobody did that the the themes he did death he did violence he did war he did loss you know little children are terribly afraid of law of being lost he did he did more than one program on loss but all the time in this this program on death he's talking in such a completely honest way he's not talking down to the children at all and when she died i cried my grandmother heard me crying i remember and she came she just put her arm around me because she knew i was sad and as a grown-up you can watch it and it's moving and you and you feel what he's saying about death he talks about when his dog died when he was little and he wanted to keep the dog and pretend it was alive and his father had to explain to him it's just a beautiful piece of television and because it is so honest and authentic for these little children i mean it's in language that they understand i've watched it multiple times as a grown up and and i it isn't just useful to watch it as a biographer it's moving to watch it i guess you know that i really love music in fact it's been very very important to me since i was very little the music was really important to mr rogers neighborhood and primarily it was because fred himself was a musician he was a composer so music was a way for him he always said to express his feelings my mom and dad didn't like me to bang when i was angry but i found that if i played the piano when i was angry [Music] they didn't mind that so that's what i did i play like that he could play through his fingers he could play out his feelings his anger he could get anger jealousy sadness he could get all that out and and work it through at the piano and then little by little i'd see that the music would be sounding less and less angry so it seemed that the more i played the more anger got out of me and i felt better about everything part of what he wanted to help children know is that music can be a really healthy way to express your feelings so the music and fred wrote all the music he wrote the melodies and the lyrics and johnny just brilliantly arranged the music besides the the music itself there was something really important i remember in the very early days of fred rogers talking with johnny costa about the silence johnny would make music underneath so much of what fred was doing he would sort of lead you on and lead you to the song and and help with the mood of what was going on but it was really really important that there would be silence and i remember johnny talking about how he had to discipline himself to keep his hands off the keyboard because the silence was so important to fred isn't that a strange rainbow what do you think it needs more colors right i think the silence was important because it really helped you think about reflect focus your attention music can be distracting too and fred wanted to help children appreciate silence where they could think things through it gives you time everybody today is talking about mindfulness that's the kind of thing it's being present at the moment most television is afraid of silence they're terrified that you're going to change the channel and then lose advertising dollars and maybe that's one of the wonderful things about fred choosing to be with public television that he could have the luxury of those quiet times where i'm not going to say where nothing happened because fred rogers considered mr rogers neighborhood as a television visit and so what happens in the silence is you get drawn into this this is not just mr rogers telling you things or showing you things he's inviting you to be a part of it and engaging you in the moment and silence gives us that opportunity to do that i'm very concerned that our society is much more interested in information than wonder in noise rather than silence how do we do that i mean in our business yours and mine how do we encourage reflection oh my this is a noisy world he what he focused on most was understanding and listening he wanted children to learn how important it is to listen and to understand and he wanted parents he was always not only through the program that he did but he he did some programming for adults too and he and he wrote books and he made speeches and big big focus for him was we've got to listen particularly the little children and understand and one of the things fred would always do when he was talking to little children was get down on the floor with them he wouldn't be up here talking down to them so i think listening was a terribly important thing some things you see are confusing some things you hear are strange but if you ask someone to explain one or two you'll begin to notice a change in you if you will look the most important lesson that i think i've learned from fred rogers is to listen look look and listen so much of the time it seems like when we're talking to somebody else and someone is saying something we're thinking about what we can say in return in response instead of really listening he was a real listener the best one i ever knew you felt that interest in you too you didn't feel you were boring i always get a question what's what is the one most important thing that you can do for children or one can do for children and i always say listen and fred says listen to what children are saying they'll come into a room maybe and ask you questions so put down the paper or or turn off the computer and just sit there and listen to what children are saying that i think is the best advice i've ever heard and it applies not only to children but to to adults if fred used to say he thought of himself as an emotional archaeologist because he loved hearing people's stories and i've worked really hard to be a good listener and it makes me feel better and i'm learning more about other people because of that and the other thing which you can see in the way the programs are all made he knew how frenetic little children can be and so he wanted to slow everything down by the way this is at a time when everything else in television was speeding up you know faster and faster shorter frames faster and faster action and cutting to this and cutting to that this is the 70s and 80s when you think about it over the years the program really didn't change that much the pace of it didn't change that much his way of talking or showing things did not change that much because he knew that's what was right for children snow opera in the neighborhood of make-believe now i wonder why real snow is always white flowers are all different colors animals are all different colors people are different colors i don't understand about snow he was not about to change because the world got faster and things got there was more you know faster things in children's world and more action on other children's television because he knew this is what's really right for children and rogers cut completely against the grain of what was happening in that day and age so in addition to listening i think the other major message from fred was slow down calm down he was talking to little children but he was talking to grown-ups too and it's such a relevant message today because all of us react to what's going on in the world today with technology with globalization and we feel as if we just we got to do everything we got to run faster we got to get more done and and fred's lesson was you'll get a lot more done and you'll do it a lot better if you slow down and live in the moment so i think that's a really important lesson from fred to both children and grown-ups and i think it's fascinating that i hear today some parents are saying i want my children to see mr rogers neighborhood because of what it is and what it offers to children it's so healthy i was always amazed that fred had the ability to remain calm so much of the time and i think it was because he had a discipline about things he was able to concentrate it was just part of who he was i think to be able to concentrate he was able to be so centered and present and calm and patient because of what he went through as a little child he really wanted to help children because i think his childhood was hard for him and so he i think he wanted to help them over the hurdles that he had to jump when he was growing up and when he when he became a teenager and he decided what kind of person he wanted to be he was fierce in his determination to be this kind of person and i think he created almost created a character almost created mr rogers he he worked on that character and he worked on that character and he taught himself that sort of zen quality of being in the moment in the studio he he was also he had this wonderful playfulness about him that was balanced with the seriousness of what he was doing and we saw both of those sides in the office the thoughtful fred and the whimsical fred fred rogers had a great sense of humor and it doesn't necessarily come out in the programs i mean it does in little whimsical things you know when fred came in he used to wear brown loafers and change into his sneakers so there was a guy in the crew that was not much taller than i am maybe 5'3 and he had small feet but he always wore the exact same kind of loafers that fred had so one day we switched out the loafers and so fred's taking off his sweater and and it was at the end of the show where he's getting ready to leave and he's putting on the shoe and he can't get his foot in it because he wore size nine and jim was like size 7 or something so he was just he laughed hysterically [Music] [Laughter] i like that nice are they they're jimmy oh jim do you have mine on oh well oh he knew i liked to laugh so he would do lots of things to make me laugh but just he loved to be silly he re i mean that was his humor was whimsical and silliness uh it was it was never um he he didn't like uh jokes about um say well i'll just say jokes or or polish jokes or uh you know anything that denigrated people in some way uh but but but he just really liked being silly so that was and he knew i did too so that was fun we we could be very silly and and laugh a lot fred rogers never really considered himself an actor that who he was in front of that camera was pretty much who he was in life fred had a slow measured way of speaking a thoughtful way and yet obviously was more casual and more conversational but it had that same sense of i care about you because he was the same off off the screen as he was on the screen he was absolutely the same person the the i only met him twice the second time was on the street just to say hello but the first time i had an hour and a half interview with him in his office and he was exactly the same way he was on television and he was fun to to talk to because um i was the president of the heinz endowments and we funded mr rogers neighborhood so i assumed we were going to talk about money i assumed we were going to talk about what his plans were for the program never not a word we talked about our parents our children where we went on vacation pittsburgh never mentioned money he did get the grant though the difference between mr rogers and fred rogers is that he he didn't you he didn't change his voice he didn't talk faster he he didn't you know use swear words and i mean he essentially was the same person but it was about content content change you know he was a he was a scholar and and he was very smart he was a scholar he under when he was with adults he talked about adult subjects but it was still the same quiet thoughtful delivery but it was it was the same person it was the same way of reacting person to person and being with us you really felt like he cared and i think that's you know it was that that slow measured speech that was thoughtful and caring fred rogers he also got mad and it but it wasn't yelling it wasn't screaming it was let's sit down and talk about this this is not working for me or he got he got angry he got frustrated and angry you know he got he got angry if things weren't working right in the studio not in any one person just because we're not getting the work done or he got angry when somebody was unkind to somebody else wide world seems oh so wrong and nothing you do seems very right what do you do do you punch a bag do you pound some clay or some dough i remember once after a production in november we always had a thanksgiving dinner for all the crew and so for some reason for budgetary reasons or something an executive director of the company said we're not going to do that this year and he kind of cancelled it and when fred found out he was really angry because he said that's we do that every year for them i don't you know we'll figure a way to pay for it that he was angry just because that was us giving you know that that was something that people looked forward to and it was a nice dinner and so that's the kind of thing he would get angry about but he didn't it was about working it out in a civil way and so that's probably something that people don't know because i people would ask me lots of times does mr rogers ever get mad he was like yeah i mean you know he's a human being so yeah he does get mad we all get mad so many people have asked me do you ever get mad and of course i answer well yes everyone gets mad sometimes the important thing is what we do with the mad that we feel in life fred was such a great appreciator he he often did things just that you just felt were kindness from him um sometimes it was just a note um i thank you for every now and then when i would make black raspberry jam and in the summertime and i'd give him some i got this handwritten gracious note left on my chair at the office and when he came back from the soviet union in 19 i think it was 89 we he was videotaping a segment there because there was a woman there at a children's show and we decided to make a trip to the soviet union when he came back he took he walked around the office in this kind of mysterious way taking everybody's picture with his little camera nobody knew what he was doing but he would just say you know i'm taking a picture and then he went back to his office and what he did was he had developed each of our pictures and pasted it each one of us got a poster that he had bought in russia that in russian said employee of the month and he gave each of us this wonderful piece of employee of the month it was such a wonderful atmosphere to be in because we knew that we were appreciated we were a small group there were only 12 or maybe 14 at the most and there was never any sense of somebody being the favored son we all felt that we were an important part of his team and we each brought something that nobody else could and his his warmth to us us each time his welcoming his his you had a sense that he was grateful that we were all there and he the atmosphere in the studio and the atmosphere in the office was very kind and caring when my mother was very ill and i couldn't be at work in those couple of weeks and i had to be with her fred said to me oh hedy you're doing the most important work there is that was the level of kindness and he cared about each of us and and really appreciated the work that we were doing with him there's a wonderful story that i got from bill eisler who was the president of family communications which is now fred rogers productions and bill just retired and bill tells the story of uh going to new york with fred they were going to do a shoot and they were walking down the street to get to the chute they had a unionized film crew standing there on the clock costing money and they passed a homeless man whose was back to his back was to the the wall of a stone office building and the man said something to fred you know to get him to make a contribution and fred put a five dollar bill in the cup but then he sat down and he started talking to the man and he stayed there for 20 minutes talking to this man and bill eisler was going crazy trying to get him to move trying to get him to go to the shoot but for fred that that person had said something to him so that person was important right then i was watching the other day one of the films the most for me the most moving of all the film all the film clips that were shown in um it's available almost everywhere when fred talked to the audience talk to his talk to his audience after 9 11. very disturbing he was obviously having a hard time getting that into his mind so right after 9 11 we decided to do these public service announcements for parents and teachers and for the adults and we were getting ready in the studio and i went upstairs to his office the studio was on one floor and we were on the second floor and i walked in and fred was just i i can't even explain it he was just so sad so questioning he said why are we doing these these aren't going to do any good i panicked because he was always the one who took care of us and i thought how do how do i figure out how to convince him that that this is worthwhile and so i said to him fred how can you say that i said don't you understand how important you are you know that millions of people love you and their kids love you and they they listen to you you know you've got to do these and so you know we had a kind of a time together where we just we just calmed down and i said i'm gonna go downstairs you know i'll see you in five minutes you can do this this is you know this is so important you know people listen to you they care about what you say and so we did them and that's when i remember him using the phrase look for the helpers which of course has become so um important in these past years when there's been all of this horrible mass shootings and all of you know just these these storms and this terrible weather where people's lives are just torn apart that who knew that those would that that phrase would become so popular and we are so glad it did you know you know my mother used to say long time ago whenever there would be any really catastrophe that was on the in the movies or or on the air she would say always look for the helpers there were there will always be helpers you know even just on the sidelines that's why i think that if news programs could make a conscious effort of showing rescue teams of showing who medical people anybody who is coming into a place where there's a tragedy to be to be sure that they include that [Music] because if you look for the helpers you'll know that there's hope you can always look for the helpers you know looking for the helpers is very popular now because there's a there's a lot of turmoil going on but helping somebody across the street or you know it's like when you look for the helpers and you're in need it also allows you to then become that helper the next time you're in a situation but you're on the other side when something happens the the you know there's a shooting or something right away you see fred rogers sayings you'll see video of fred you'll see songs that fred did because he's an exemplar of the best values at a time when we're terrified we're losing those values so that makes him very relevant today i think makes him an important cultural figure i mean a lot of people say to me what would fred do and that's such a hard question to answer because he approached the world in such a different way than i do and i think that his message would always be be kind be civil that we all can do that you know there's a lot of negativity in our society today about a lot of things and so it was refreshing to have this person say you know you you're unique you're important and to kind of give that reaffirmation that we all have kindness in us but you know the toughest thing is to love somebody who has done something mean to you especially when that somebody has been yourself have you ever done anything mean to yourself well it's very important to look inside yourself and find that loving part of you that's the part that you must take good care of and never be mean to because that's the part of you that allows you to love your neighbor and your neighbor is anyone you happen to be with at any time of your life respecting and loving your neighbor can give everybody a good feeling i think for fred rogers to be a good neighbor in his world meant to be kind and considerate and thoughtful and it also meant to pay attention what fred cared about was personal relationships in a lot of ways and he cared about the people who were who were close around him the people he worked with his family the people that he saw each day when he went to the university of pittsburgh and so to him being a good neighbor meant paying attention to those people giving them time not rushing through things and being kind being kind was very important to him i think being a good neighbor first has to come caring caring about that person as a human being i think you could be there for people and uh there are many ways and i think it's very important and it's as fred fred talked about giving your honest self it's the best thing you can do i think that's part of being a good neighbor there's this thing i think that the program's greatest accomplishment was fred's kindness and his need for people to understand that they do have an effect on people around them and that kindness can be spread so i think that his wish would always be to be kind to understand what love is many ways many ways [Music] many ways to say i love you [Music] you will find many ways as you grow [Music] my way is to come and visit with you i remember at one point somebody said when we were doing some writing about fred somebody said had a don't make him out to be a saint because if you make him out to be a saint people think he's some other kind of creature i could never be like that but fred worked at this he worked at being a listener he worked at understanding that it's okay you're not perfect he worked at trying to understand how do you deal with your feelings what do you do with your anger and i think that the best thing that i would hope people would take is that this stuff is we can all move in that direction even with kindness with words of kindness to each other the little moments it's not the big stuff it's the little moments that can matter i i can't even put it into one phrase of what i hope people would take it's all these little moments of everyday life that really matter to each other there are people doing good things every single day and i think that that's what he would want all of us to remember so yes we need people like fred rogers what would i like people to remember of fred some of it has to do with the phrases that we heard over and over again the one you are special and so is everyone else in this world that there are no perfect people we're just human whatever is human can be more mentionable and what is more mentionable can be more manageable to be able to talk about your feelings and talk them through that we all need to feel loved and lovable and know that we're capable of loving those are kind of things that we can take inside us 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 you've made this day a special day you see by just your being you and if a person can receive that of course it's an enhancement to them but think of what an enhancement it is to the to the giver he he was just the best at at his relationship with chill young children and i hope that that will live through the years and i think it will i think it will it was what he aimed to do that was that was what the most important task was to be there for the little ones to he used to say to provide a safe lap for young children i think a lot of the parents in america learned how important those early years were which they didn't know and learned how important it is to be present for children and listen to children i think that's one huge impact he had he really taught a whole nation how important those first few years are how critical those first few years are he worked with the academics who were developing the best thinking about early childhood education and so i think you know now today if you go around the united states go to any city even any small city and they have early childhood education centers it's accepted that it's a critical piece of education and fred popularized it he was so open to other people's beliefs and not only just open interested uh he was he was an intellectual person and uh and and not only intellectual but uh really passionate about things and not not just what he believed but what others believed he felt was so important oh my don't we need him i know how tough it is some days to look with hope and confidence on the months and years ahead but i would like to tell you what i often told you when you were much younger i like you just the way you are and what's more i'm so grateful to you for helping the children in your life to know that you'll do everything you can to keep them safe and to help them express their feelings in ways that will bring healing in many different neighborhoods it's such a good feeling to know that we're lifelong friends [Music] i think he would be absolutely amazed and thrilled at how he is being remembered i i really do i think it's just been so remarkable i think he would i i think that's exactly how in his wildest dreams he might have wished [Music] before i say goodbye to you all i'd like to read this form of friends it's one you'll you'll know from a song it's you i like 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 the way down deep inside you not the things that hide you not your toys they're just beside you part of you but it's you i like your skin your every part of you your feeling your skin your eyes your feelings where the old or new i hope that you'll remember you will remember even when we were feeling blue that it's you it's you yourself it's you it's you i like it's you i like [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Swift Fox Media

Views: 150,954

Rating: 4.9278111 out of 5

Keywords: Fox, Chapel, High, School, FC, Students, Fred, Mister, Joanne, Rogers, McFeely, David Newell, Hedda Sharapan, Margy Whitmer, Maxwell King, Neighborhood, Documentary, Movie, Full, PBS, WQED, Biography, Good Neighbor, Lance Wilhelm, Adina Munin, Jean Daniher, KDKA, Wife, Pittsburgh, Rodgers, Mr, Mr., Best, Favorite, New, Children

Id: 0ijzTmatpdM

Length: 71min 1sec (4261 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2020

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Includes interviews with Joanne Rogers, biographer Maxwell King and cast and producers from the original show