Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Carvel and before we get into this episode,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you a favor. Throughout this series,
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about how Fred Rogers has helped
Speaker 1: show us how to make the world a kinder place,
Speaker 1: a better place. But now we want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: We want to hear a story about when someone in
Speaker 1: your life showed you what it means to be a helper.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's someone in your family, or someone in your community,
Speaker 1: or someone that you haven't seen since you were a kid,
Speaker 1: but that you still think about something they did to
Speaker 1: help you. Whoever they are, wherever they are, however they're helping,
Speaker 1: we want to hear about it. So give us a
Speaker 1: call at three three six five one five zero five
Speaker 1: to nine. Again, that's three three six five one five
Speaker 1: zero five to nine, and tell us a story about
Speaker 1: someone who has shown you how to be a helper
Speaker 1: and we might just play it on an upcoming episode.
Speaker 1: Again that number is three three six five one five
Speaker 1: zero five two nine, or you can tweet you're still
Speaker 1: with the hashtag finding Fred. Okay, now let's start the show.
Speaker 1: Here's a question. Did Fred Rogers do enough by he
Speaker 1: had lived and breathed children's television for more than twenty years.
Speaker 1: He had found kid friendly ways to cover death and
Speaker 1: assassination and segregation, but also haircuts and doctors visits and
Speaker 1: moving to a new home. And he felt like he'd
Speaker 1: done enough. He felt that he created a library of
Speaker 1: television visits that covered everything a child needed to know
Speaker 1: about growing up. So Mr Rogers decided he was done.
Speaker 1: In a week of episodes slated to be his last,
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers takes us out to his garage, where he
Speaker 1: shows us a big cabinet filled with dozens and dozens
Speaker 1: of VHS tapes, all neatly lined up in rows. See
Speaker 1: those are all different visits, television visits that we have
Speaker 1: on tape. Share this one Justice. He is about to
Speaker 1: pop one of these tapes into the VCR. Mr McFeeley
Speaker 1: stops by and the two get to talking about how
Speaker 1: McFeeley has changed since his earliest visits to the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: I remember the days when it was very, very hard
Speaker 1: for you to sit still, Mr McFeeley. Well, I used
Speaker 1: to talk louder then, and talk faster. I'll show you
Speaker 1: a tape on that machine over there, and see if
Speaker 1: you remember that visit. I'd like to see that visit.
Speaker 1: You know, my video tape machine over here, see if
Speaker 1: you remember this time when you came to visit me already.
Speaker 1: Fred plays the tape and the two watch what is
Speaker 1: essentially a rerun of a Mr. Rogers neighborhood segment from
Speaker 1: a few years before. Then, Fred explains, we'll be seeing
Speaker 1: a lot of reruns from now on. Well, next week
Speaker 1: we'll start to show all of these visits so everybody
Speaker 1: can see them the whole way through. Well, I'll look
Speaker 1: forward to that. And with that Mr Rogers signed off.
Speaker 1: I'm Carvela Wallace and this is Finding Fred, a podcast
Speaker 1: about Fred Rogers from I Heart Media and Fatherly in
Speaker 1: partnership with Transmitter Media. Fred Rogers felt like he'd done enough.
Speaker 1: He created an encyclopedia of programs that anticipated the questions
Speaker 1: and anxieties that children have as they grow and learn, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, getting poked and prodded or stuck with a needle.
Speaker 1: Over the years, Fred had made several visits to optometrists
Speaker 1: Barbour's Doctors. Producer Arthur Greenwald worked with Fred in a
Speaker 1: series of episodes about going to the hospital. You had
Speaker 1: a long time interest in how children are frightened or
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by hospitalization. You know, I was really struck by
Speaker 1: There was this moment where he was talking about X rays.
Speaker 1: He was talking with the physician about X rays, and
Speaker 1: the physician was explaining, well, even we can see your bones,
Speaker 1: And then Fred said, I know some children who will
Speaker 1: wonder if if you can see my bones, can you
Speaker 1: X ray my head and see my thoughts? If you
Speaker 1: can see the inside of a hand with X ray,
Speaker 1: could you see the inside of somebody's head and know
Speaker 1: what that person is thinking? No, uh, the X ray
Speaker 1: picture won't show thoughts, feelings. Those are things that we
Speaker 1: really can't see a touch. Our thoughts are very own,
Speaker 1: all right, Thoughts are our own. That's good to know.
Speaker 1: When I watched that, I laughed out loud because he
Speaker 1: was a grown man, and but it wasn't like silly.
Speaker 1: It was like kind of phenomenal and magical that he
Speaker 1: was able to capture a very specific, very clear thought
Speaker 1: of a child. That was important. And of course some
Speaker 1: people look at you like you're insane, But who said
Speaker 1: anything about an X ray seeing my thoughts and feelings?
Speaker 1: But by God, that is exactly what a preschool was thinking.
Speaker 1: Fred was always working to eliminate misunderstandings, and that was
Speaker 1: a real gift for television audience of toddlers who weren't
Speaker 1: necessarily used to being seen and heard and responded to.
Speaker 1: But this kind of deep focused listening made adults uncomfortable
Speaker 1: because they're socially just not used to people paying attention
Speaker 1: to their every word, and so a lot of the
Speaker 1: things will casually say as a passing joke, Fred would
Speaker 1: pause an interpret it out loud, which would be either
Speaker 1: illuminating or embarrassing, depending on you know, how comfortable you
Speaker 1: are with that sort of conversation. It seems like Fred
Speaker 1: was betting on most people being comfortable with that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, because when he left Mr Rogers Neighborhood, he
Speaker 1: set out to make a new television program for adults.
Speaker 1: He developed a new show with PBS called Old Friends,
Speaker 1: New Friends. It featured Fred talking with other adults about
Speaker 1: what they're passionate about and where their inspiration comes from.
Speaker 1: That's what he was interested in. This is TV critic
Speaker 1: David b. And Cooley. It's like, if you're a musician,
Speaker 1: where does the music come from? You know? What was
Speaker 1: it like that made you become a musician and sort
Speaker 1: of get to the bottom of what what is art
Speaker 1: and what is an artist. The show was documentary style.
Speaker 1: Fred visited different locations around the country. He talked to
Speaker 1: famous and not so famous people about their lives and
Speaker 1: show them at work. Pittsburgh baseball legend Willie Stargel opened
Speaker 1: up about resilience. Comedian Milton Burrow talked about the rewards
Speaker 1: of fame. Fred visited Robert Frost's daughter An NPR hosts
Speaker 1: Susan Stamberg. Old Friends, New Friends was conversational, warm, and
Speaker 1: because this was still Fred Rogers after all, it was slow.
Speaker 1: Responses to the show were mixed. I saw them and
Speaker 1: and I loved what he was doing with them, but
Speaker 1: you have to you have to be open to it
Speaker 1: and be interested. Not everybody loved it. Fred's biographer Max
Speaker 1: King told me he didn't think it was very good.
Speaker 1: I watched a lot of it. It's not particularly compelling.
Speaker 1: The approach that he brought to children's television just didn't
Speaker 1: translate to adult television. Betsy Siemens had worked with Fred
Speaker 1: and Mr Rogers Neighborhood. She later helped produce episodes of
Speaker 1: Old Friends, New Friends, the idea that he was going
Speaker 1: to quit doing the neighborhood. I thought, good for you,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I I found like people move on.
Speaker 1: I mean I I think I think I was aware
Speaker 1: that it was hard for him because he had been
Speaker 1: doing this other work for so long, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to just really switch gears and
Speaker 1: work for a completely different audience and in a in
Speaker 1: a really profoundly different medium. The show featured extreme close
Speaker 1: ups of people's faces, long silent pauses, deep reflection on
Speaker 1: family histories, and many of Fred's signature moves, slow pacing,
Speaker 1: intimate production, emphasis, and emotions, but these didn't necessarily translate
Speaker 1: for most grown ups. Fred's show was illuminating, but many
Speaker 1: viewers found the intimacy embarrassing or even worse on TV boring.
Speaker 1: One New York Times critic wrote that for some viewers,
Speaker 1: This Quiet Man may appear to have taken one volume
Speaker 1: too many, But I watched it the only episode you
Speaker 1: can really find online an interview with concert pianist Lauren Hollander,
Speaker 1: and honestly, I found it brilliant. The intimacy, the patient's
Speaker 1: Fred's willingness to hover over difficult topics, with sometimes difficult people.
Speaker 1: Was transfixing. You're the only pianist who has ever communicated
Speaker 1: to me the feeling that this instrument is a place,
Speaker 1: that it is a country, that it's somewhere that you
Speaker 1: go to say something. And I've felt that today. Were Beethoven,
Speaker 1: the throws of his deafness kept a little chimberpot under
Speaker 1: the keyboard, and he used to keep his head pressed
Speaker 1: here against the wood. He could not leave the instrument
Speaker 1: long enough to take care of his needs. And we
Speaker 1: who grew up here know that it's an answer, because
Speaker 1: there's a way of dealing with that incredibly complex reality.
Speaker 1: When I heard that, it occurred to me that maybe
Speaker 1: that is the case for Fred too, that he was
Speaker 1: like Beethoven or Lauren Hollander, and that in a sense,
Speaker 1: the precision and love and kindness of Mr rogers neighborhood
Speaker 1: was his place, his country where he could deal with
Speaker 1: the incredibly complex reality. And he got to go back
Speaker 1: there when he returned to Mr Rogers neighborhood. More than that,
Speaker 1: after a break in, Fred Rogers wrote himself a note.
Speaker 1: It's typed neatly on a piece of yellow legal paper,
Speaker 1: the kind Fred used for early drafts of his scripts.
Speaker 1: Am I kidding myself that I am able to write
Speaker 1: his script again? He wrote? Why don't I trust myself?
Speaker 1: He continues, after all these years, it's just as bad
Speaker 1: as ever. Oh well, the hour cometh and now is
Speaker 1: when I've got to do it. Get to it, Fred.
Speaker 1: Just a few weeks prior, a four year old boy
Speaker 1: named Charles Green died after jumping from his grandmother's seventh
Speaker 1: story apartment in Brooklyn. His mother told reporters he'd been
Speaker 1: trying to fly like Superman. Fred Rogers had already started
Speaker 1: working on a new episode to The Neighborhood Program, but
Speaker 1: he was shaken by the story of little Charles Green,
Speaker 1: the kid trying desperately to be like a hero he
Speaker 1: saw on screen. When Fred left The Neighborhood Program five
Speaker 1: years earlier, he thought he'd said everything there was to say,
Speaker 1: But the world itself had changed. Daycare was now a
Speaker 1: widespread and normal thing, but clearly a terrifying thing to
Speaker 1: a toddler, and what to say to kids about divorce
Speaker 1: as it became more and more prevalent. Television itself had evolved,
Speaker 1: had become a never silent fixture in every home, and
Speaker 1: there were more channels and programs spraying all sorts of
Speaker 1: violence and fantasy at children. So Fred did what he
Speaker 1: knew how to do best. Remember when I was a boy,
Speaker 1: I used to take a sweater and put it around
Speaker 1: my my shoulders like that, hold the arms out like that,
Speaker 1: and pretend that I was flying. Yeah, let's go out here.
Speaker 1: I'll show you what. Had a couple of steps there
Speaker 1: at the porch, and I would girl like this. But
Speaker 1: of course I never took off. Because only birds and
Speaker 1: bats and bugs can fly. People can't. Only birds and
Speaker 1: bats and bugs can fly. I want to sing that
Speaker 1: with me. Only birds and bats and bugs can fly.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I wish I could fly, but only birds and
Speaker 1: bats and bugs and fly. Fred made an entire week
Speaker 1: of programming about how superheroes aren't real. He even visited
Speaker 1: the Universal Studio sound stage where The Incredible Hulk was filmed,
Speaker 1: and he showed the star looferign no putting on and
Speaker 1: taking off his costume. That's all part of his work,
Speaker 1: all part. And here's the special solution that takes the
Speaker 1: green makeup off. I like seeing the makeup coming off
Speaker 1: just as well as going on. But I was glad
Speaker 1: to show my television friends that because it's important to
Speaker 1: realize that people just don't change shape and change color.
Speaker 1: That's all just sort of movie business, isn't it. It's
Speaker 1: it's just makeup pretend. Of course, you remember the note
Speaker 1: Fred wrote to himself. A few weeks later, he added
Speaker 1: a handwritten PS. It wasn't easy, but it was good.
Speaker 1: This I must remember. In the sixteen years since Fred passed,
Speaker 1: he's been turned into a TV superhero himself, someone who
Speaker 1: was born with extra powers of intuition and communication and
Speaker 1: self control and love. Fred Rogers wasn't a superhero. His
Speaker 1: biographer told me that Fred himself would be horror hid
Speaker 1: that anybody might think he was a saint. But producer
Speaker 1: Margie Whitmer told me that Fred did believe that his
Speaker 1: show mattered. It's hard, I think when you when you
Speaker 1: become famous, there's lots of people who tell you how
Speaker 1: wonderful you are. You know, he had lots of followers.
Speaker 1: You tend to believe that you're making a difference. The
Speaker 1: audience was national, even international. There were enormous lineups to
Speaker 1: meet Mr Rogers when he did public appearances. He was
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers, but the program was bigger than him. I
Speaker 1: just had a letter the other day. It was from
Speaker 1: this woman who said, fourteen years ago, I had a
Speaker 1: baby who was sixteen months old, and I had that
Speaker 1: baby in the backseat of the car, and I was
Speaker 1: in such a terrible depression my heart. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know that I had put him back there. And she said,
Speaker 1: I was driving along and I saw this truck coming
Speaker 1: and I thought, I'm just gonna end it all. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna go straight into the truck. Because she was desperate,
Speaker 1: and she said, I started turning to the left, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I heard this little voice singing,
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful day in this And she said, I
Speaker 1: veered my car to the right, and I thought of
Speaker 1: life and love. And now it's fourteen years later, and
Speaker 1: I just need to thank you. Well. You know, to
Speaker 1: hear that your works can be used in such wonderful
Speaker 1: ways is a great blessing. When I started interviewing people
Speaker 1: for this project, there were two questions. I asked almost
Speaker 1: everyone who knew Fred, did you think he did enough?
Speaker 1: Do you think Fred thought he did enough? And while
Speaker 1: the responses varied, a lot of people told me the
Speaker 1: same thing, Yes, they think Fred did enough, but he
Speaker 1: always wanted to do more. Fred returned to the Neighborhood
Speaker 1: Program in nine. The show ran until two thousand one.
Speaker 1: He kept at it almost three times as long as
Speaker 1: his first run, for decades and for generations of kids.
Speaker 1: He was a voice of comfort, of stability, and of reason.
Speaker 1: He'd made a special episode when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.
Speaker 1: He'd recorded p S A S in the middle of
Speaker 1: the Gulf War. Fred finally retired in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: after nine episodes and thirty years on the air. But
Speaker 1: we don't know if Fred ever actually felt like he
Speaker 1: did enough. We do know that just a few weeks later,
Speaker 1: planes flew into the Twin Towers in New York. When
Speaker 1: nine eleven happened, he was so distraught. I don't think
Speaker 1: that I ever really until that day, I didn't think
Speaker 1: on a real internal level about his mission as saving
Speaker 1: the world. I thought. I think I just thought about
Speaker 1: it in more practical terms, we of helping people try
Speaker 1: and do the best they can. I think it really
Speaker 1: hit home to him when those when the Twin Towers
Speaker 1: got hit that he's not the savior. He can't save
Speaker 1: the world. Some of Fred's producers including Marty Whitmer, convinced
Speaker 1: him to send one final message in his office. I
Speaker 1: went up to get him to come down to the
Speaker 1: studio and he was. He was a mess. He was said,
Speaker 1: why am I doing these? These aren't going to do
Speaker 1: any good. I said, you have to do them. And
Speaker 1: I said, Fred, people care about you, People listen to you.
Speaker 1: You have got to do these. None of us can
Speaker 1: save the world. We can do the best we can do.
Speaker 1: In the p s A Fred recorded after September eleven,
Speaker 1: he repeated his story he'd often told about his mother
Speaker 1: comforting him when he was young. She told him, notice
Speaker 1: the people who are helping during times of crisis. Look
Speaker 1: for the helpers. She said, there's always someone trying to help.
Speaker 1: Look for the helpers. Has become this sort of stock meme,
Speaker 1: one that gets reposted all over social media after a catastrophe,
Speaker 1: whether a natural disaster or mass shooting. But there's something
Speaker 1: I want you to notice about Fred's final message. Listen closely.
Speaker 1: Who is he talking to. I'm just so proud of
Speaker 1: all of you who have grown up with us, and
Speaker 1: I know how tough it is some days to look
Speaker 1: with hope and confidence on the months and years ahead.
Speaker 1: But I would like to tell you what I often
Speaker 1: told you when you were much younger. I like you
Speaker 1: just the way you are. And what's more, I'm so
Speaker 1: grateful to you for helping the children in your life
Speaker 1: to know that you'll do everything you can to keep
Speaker 1: them safe and to help them express their feelings in
Speaker 1: ways that will bring healing in many different neighborhoods. It's
Speaker 1: such a good feeling to know that we're lifelong friends.
Speaker 1: He's talking to us, to the adults in the room.
Speaker 1: His producer, Betsy Siemens says, this is the message of
Speaker 1: friends that we need now. Look for the helper. Was
Speaker 1: advice to children, and we are not children. And I've
Speaker 1: heard a lot of adults saying, oh well, Fred Rogers
Speaker 1: made me feel so much better because he said look
Speaker 1: for the helpers and no, no, that was advice to children,
Speaker 1: and that was not advice to the parent. It's an
Speaker 1: interesting distinction though, between the child and the parents and
Speaker 1: the adult. Uh, because the harm that comes to many
Speaker 1: of us in our childhoods. I think this is my
Speaker 1: theory my therapist agrees is that is that it we
Speaker 1: get frozen in moments in time and we don't ever
Speaker 1: overcome our childhoods in that way, and so we constantly
Speaker 1: have this child in us that is crying out for
Speaker 1: the things that we need as children, crying out for
Speaker 1: safety or for acknowledge, manner for because we don't get
Speaker 1: those things as young people. And so I think that
Speaker 1: that may even be we may be experiencing a mass
Speaker 1: level of fact as a country. Maybe it's one of
Speaker 1: my theories. And so when people hear that quote, that's
Speaker 1: the child in them, the unhealed child who's still going,
Speaker 1: oh great, now I know what to do. It's it's
Speaker 1: hard to be an adult, and it's hard to be
Speaker 1: an adult when your own child hasn't been raised. Absolutely, however,
Speaker 1: it is the universal human condition. It's true for all
Speaker 1: of us, and it was true for him, and I
Speaker 1: still think I know that one of the things that
Speaker 1: was very important to him on the program was that
Speaker 1: he always be the adult, the adult who can play
Speaker 1: with children, and I mean, he acknowledged all of our
Speaker 1: inner children in his own but he also understood that
Speaker 1: there comes a time in life when we also have
Speaker 1: to be the adult. And I think that was one
Speaker 1: of the fine points of his work. We're the grown
Speaker 1: ups doing what we can. Doing enough doesn't mean fixing
Speaker 1: a tragedy as massive as nine eleven, but it does
Speaker 1: mean helping every one of us has something essential inside
Speaker 1: of us that we can use to help. For Fred,
Speaker 1: that meant sitting at the bedside of a comatose kid,
Speaker 1: or staying on the air for thirty years, helping children
Speaker 1: grow into adults who could help other people. What does
Speaker 1: it mean for you? I think he drove himself very hard,
Speaker 1: and I think his expectations of himself were extraordinary, So
Speaker 1: I would guess that he never thought he did enough.
Speaker 1: Because here's the thing. There is no enough, There is
Speaker 1: no finish line. The problems were faced with are so big,
Speaker 1: so many, that no one of us can address them alone.
Speaker 1: It's not easy to keep trying, but it's one good
Speaker 1: way to grow. It's not easy to keep learning, but
Speaker 1: I know that this is so. When you've tried and learned,
Speaker 1: you're bigger inside than you were a day ago. It's
Speaker 1: not easy to keep trying, but it's one way to grow.
Speaker 1: You've got to you see every little bit, You've got
Speaker 1: to do it, do it, do it, do it, and
Speaker 1: when you're through, you can know who did it for you.
Speaker 1: Did it. You did it. You did it, And when
Speaker 1: you've done something that you wanted to do and you've
Speaker 1: done it well, you can get such a good feeling
Speaker 1: from that next time. I think it was the first
Speaker 1: time in my life where I felt seen by an adult,
Speaker 1: like when he got down to my eye level, introduced
Speaker 1: himself and looked me in the eye. Of course, I've
Speaker 1: had adults introduced themselves to me a million times up
Speaker 1: into that point and asked me what my name was,
Speaker 1: But the way that he looked at me, I felt
Speaker 1: like you saw me. Finding Fred is produced by Transmitter Media.
Speaker 1: The team is Dan O'donald, Jordan Bailey, and Maddie Foley.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Sarah Nicks. The executive producer for Transmitter
Speaker 1: Media is Greta Cohne. Executive producers at Fatherly are Simon
Speaker 1: Isaacs and Andrew Berman. Thanks to the team of a
Speaker 1: I Heart Media, Fred Rogers interviewed tape courtesy of the
Speaker 1: Television Academy Foundation Interviews. The full interview is available at
Speaker 1: Television Academy dot com slash Interviews. Our show is mixed
Speaker 1: by Rick Kwan, music by Blue Dot Sessions and Alison
Speaker 1: Layton Brown. If you like what you're hearing, rate the show,
Speaker 1: review the show and tell a friend I'm Carvell Wallace.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.