Speaker 1: It is so warm in my neighborhood today that I
Speaker 1: thought I would just get some water in this little
Speaker 1: pond and cool off my feet. In May of nine,
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers Neighborhood has only been on TV for a
Speaker 1: little more than a year. Mr Rogers arrives to his
Speaker 1: house carrying a kiddie poole. Let's now go get the water,
Speaker 1: all right? Of course, it's not a hot summer day.
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers has taped in a sound stage at w
Speaker 1: q E D in Pittsburgh, and the episode aired early
Speaker 1: in May, so it was probably taped somewhere around mid April,
Speaker 1: if not earlier. Some children think that when you grow up,
Speaker 1: you don't really care for cool water on your feet
Speaker 1: on a hot day. And I can tell you, as
Speaker 1: a Pittsburgh native, April in Pittsburgh is not summer, but
Speaker 1: I do. Yeah. So why is Fred so hot? Oh?
Speaker 1: There's Officer Clements. Officer Clemmons, come in mine, want you down.
Speaker 1: Officer Clemons is the friendly neighborhood cop who stops by
Speaker 1: now and again for a visit with Mr Rogers, and
Speaker 1: he's black. Not only is it unusual to have a
Speaker 1: black authority figure on TV in the late nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: but his role makes Officer Clemmens the only black recurring
Speaker 1: character on all of children's television at the time. It's
Speaker 1: so warm, I was just putting some water on my face.
Speaker 1: Oh it, sure is. Would you like to join me?
Speaker 1: It looks awten enjoyable. But I don't have a towel
Speaker 1: or anything. You share mine? Okay? Sure. Francois removes his
Speaker 1: tall military boots, rolls up his pants, and Mr Rogers
Speaker 1: gently soaks Francoise feet with the hose that feels better already.
Speaker 1: A few years before this into, a group of black
Speaker 1: teenagers protested segregation at a Florida motel. They didn't do
Speaker 1: it by picketing or by sitting on the lobby floor.
Speaker 1: They protested by jumping in the motel pool for swim
Speaker 1: wool water on a hot day. M hmm. The motel's owner,
Speaker 1: James Brock, responded by pouring what he said was muriatic
Speaker 1: acid into the pool with the intention of burning the
Speaker 1: protesters the teens. They were later arrested by Florida police.
Speaker 1: Swimming pools remained a hotly contested space throughout the so
Speaker 1: called Civil rights era, and that probably is why Fred
Speaker 1: Rogers was so hot in April in Pittsburgh in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. Is that enough? Well? I know how busy
Speaker 1: you are, but sometimes just a minute like this well
Speaker 1: really make a difference. That we have great boots to
Speaker 1: fill office with. Clemon, thanks for stopping by so long,
Speaker 1: Have a good day, bye bye. Great to live in
Speaker 1: a neighborhood with special people like Officer Clements. I'll bet
Speaker 1: you there weren't ten white men in this country who
Speaker 1: would share a towel with a black man. Here in America,
Speaker 1: being black sometimes really presented a problem. And those swimming
Speaker 1: pools people were behaving in a very, very unkind way.
Speaker 1: And I talked to Fred about that, how helpless they
Speaker 1: made me feel, and he said, we'll see, We'll see
Speaker 1: what we can do. Francois. We hear a lot about
Speaker 1: empathy these days. The word is everywhere, really, t shirts
Speaker 1: and toad bags and Instagram accounts, all reminding us that
Speaker 1: we can choose empathy, as if that's all it takes
Speaker 1: to fix a world that so often feels broken. But
Speaker 1: if we want to change the world, then we have
Speaker 1: to take our empathy and do something with it. I'm
Speaker 1: Carvel Wallace and This is Finding Fred, a podcast about
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers from I Heart Media and Fatherly in partnership
Speaker 1: with Transmitter Media. The entirety of the episode in which
Speaker 1: Fred silks Francoise feet is incredibly simple, but it's also
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful. Fred was a master of modeling good behavior
Speaker 1: for kids because he knew just how effective modeling could be.
Speaker 1: Here he is in an interview from I was at
Speaker 1: this nursery school and the director had invited this man
Speaker 1: to come and sculpt in front of the children. She said,
Speaker 1: I don't want you teaching sculpting. I want you simply
Speaker 1: to sit with the children and do what you feel
Speaker 1: you'd like to do with the clay. Well, the kids
Speaker 1: started using clay that medium in the most wonderful ways,
Speaker 1: And that wouldn't have happened if this gifted sculptor hadn't
Speaker 1: loved clay right in front of them. This idea of
Speaker 1: just doing what you love in front of people as
Speaker 1: a way of teaching it, of spreading it, loving the clay,
Speaker 1: as Fred would later call it, has been sitting with
Speaker 1: me since I first heard it. It echoes ideas I've
Speaker 1: heard in so many disparate context. Show Don't Tell attraction
Speaker 1: rather than promotion. So in that sense, it's a timeless,
Speaker 1: almost interfaith concept like love that neighbor, or do one
Speaker 1: too others And the other thing about it is that
Speaker 1: rather than pushing me to become some hero, some great
Speaker 1: leader of men, the idea of loving the clay just
Speaker 1: calls on me to be the best version of myself
Speaker 1: that I can be and then to let that be seen.
Speaker 1: My favorite like recurring Mr. Rogers moment is him feeding
Speaker 1: his fish. This is my friend Eve Ewing. Eve is
Speaker 1: a scholar and a writer and a professor and a
Speaker 1: poet and a comic book writer. She's like everything, you
Speaker 1: don't just be writing, you know, I just write like
Speaker 1: essays and stuff as well, and about those fish. Must
Speaker 1: feed the fish. Whenever he feeds the fish, there's like
Speaker 1: this little jazz piano riff that plays give them a
Speaker 1: little food, mimicking like the actions of the fish as
Speaker 1: they go up and like open their mouths to get
Speaker 1: the food. Seeing this adult engage in this small moment
Speaker 1: of caring for another living creature that requires just like
Speaker 1: a pause of patience and quiet is just so beautiful
Speaker 1: to me. He was showing us how to be good,
Speaker 1: not just through saying like be good, don't do drugs,
Speaker 1: don't rob people, or whatever, but actually just like doing it,
Speaker 1: like feeding the fish or helping your neighbor with something,
Speaker 1: or being nice to somebody that you know that other
Speaker 1: people are maybe not nice to all the time. Tell
Speaker 1: me more about the role that Fred Rogers played in
Speaker 1: your childhood. I know that you're calling him Fred for
Speaker 1: this podcast, but I can't bring myself to do that.
Speaker 1: I haven't bigivener, he never got it and get no
Speaker 1: permission to call this to rob By his first name. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, that's a lot. I think he's just you know,
Speaker 1: somebody that I can say that's always been there in
Speaker 1: my life in the same way that Maria and Gordon
Speaker 1: from Sesame Street have always been there. There's a way
Speaker 1: in which that can sound like kind of sad that
Speaker 1: these TV adults played this role in my life. But
Speaker 1: my mom was working full time out of the house
Speaker 1: and my dad was home with me. And he will
Speaker 1: say quite proudly and candidly that his strategy was to
Speaker 1: basically like have me watch PBS all day, and he
Speaker 1: will attribute much of my success as an adult to
Speaker 1: this parenting strategy. But I think that I think as
Speaker 1: an adult, I've come to realize that that was very intentional,
Speaker 1: That these were adults entering my life that I could
Speaker 1: view as like trustworthy, carrying adults, even if I didn't
Speaker 1: know them personally. That that I see that now in
Speaker 1: retrospect as like a form of public intervention or like
Speaker 1: a public service. That was very intentional. M. Fred Rogers
Speaker 1: was one of the first makers of TV You to
Speaker 1: recognize that it could be a constant positive presents for
Speaker 1: kids who didn't always have that at home. He liked
Speaker 1: to say that attitudes are cut, not taught. It's what
Speaker 1: happens when you watch someone love the clay in front
Speaker 1: of you. And he didn't just demonstrate how to work
Speaker 1: with the clay, or tie your shoes or draw with crayons.
Speaker 1: He actually showed kids that doing the right thing can
Speaker 1: make them feel good. One thing I've learned in my
Speaker 1: forty five years on this planet is that doing the
Speaker 1: right thing does not always feel good. Sometimes it can
Speaker 1: take a lot of effort to overcome habit or instinct
Speaker 1: to do the right thing. One of the key ways
Speaker 1: that Mr. Rogers showed us how to be good was
Speaker 1: accepting people. Accepting people as they are, and that for
Speaker 1: me is one of the most difficult lessons from Fred Rogers.
Speaker 1: It's particularly difficult these days with Nazis marching in the
Speaker 1: streets and conspiracy theorists on cable news. If being good
Speaker 1: means accepting those people as they are, well, first, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if I can do it. But am I
Speaker 1: supposed to do it? Is it supposed to feel good?
Speaker 1: I have been thinking a lot about just how to
Speaker 1: understand this moment and also how to understand where Fred
Speaker 1: fits into that. And one specific question that I've been
Speaker 1: asking everyone is that Fred has this. Uh not now
Speaker 1: I feel self conscious calling Fred, but Fred has this.
Speaker 1: I know your parents are not raised you to call.
Speaker 1: We're going to let that go. We're gonna have to
Speaker 1: edit this impost um. There's this thing about I like
Speaker 1: you the way you are, or it's you I like,
Speaker 1: it's you I like and these are these are really
Speaker 1: and this is a really fascinating for me theological concept.
Speaker 1: I even ask my therapist about this, and I was like,
Speaker 1: what about the bad people? Like? What about And I
Speaker 1: wonder how you parse that out? The idea that we
Speaker 1: are not septing and tolerating of certain people's behavior because
Speaker 1: it does harm the least of us man. That's so tricky. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm not a theologian, although I've spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time around theologians. So my non theologian reading of that
Speaker 1: is that's the idea of grace. That's what grace is, right,
Speaker 1: the idea that God's love is unconditional, and that you're
Speaker 1: great just the way you are, just just by being you.
Speaker 1: That's enough. Now, I think that there's a subtle difference
Speaker 1: between that idea and saying that everything you do is fine. Right,
Speaker 1: So to me, what I hear when I hear it's
Speaker 1: you I like or the idea of loving people unconditionally
Speaker 1: is that. I don't believe in monsters. I really don't.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that the vast majority of people who
Speaker 1: do harm do so because they're inhuman. I I believe
Speaker 1: that people harm others for so many complicated reasons that
Speaker 1: usually have to do with some variation of they themselves
Speaker 1: have been harmed and have never been given any opportunity
Speaker 1: to heal from that harm, or because our society disregards
Speaker 1: others because they're considered marginal. Now that being said, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, as the old saying goes like Jesus loves you,
Speaker 1: Jesus forgives you. That doesn't mean I have to you know,
Speaker 1: Mr rogers ministry doesn't have to be everybody's ministry. So
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers is a person who came out and said,
Speaker 1: I love everybody unconditionally, and that's not something everybody is
Speaker 1: able to do. And that is okay. You know, I
Speaker 1: think that that's fine. Accepting people as they are is
Speaker 1: a lofty goal. Not everyone is able to do that.
Speaker 1: I guess most of us can't always do that, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it's way more complicated than just accepting someone. How
Speaker 1: do you accept someone when the thing that they're doing
Speaker 1: is hurting you or hurting your family or your community.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Fred Rogers was a master of
Speaker 1: loving the clay, of demonstrating and modeling the graciousness and
Speaker 1: neighborliness that he wished to see in the world, and
Speaker 1: he did it on TV, where millions of children could
Speaker 1: mimic what Fred was modeling, but they could also learn
Speaker 1: how to love the clay in their own way. Even
Speaker 1: though Mr rogers neighborhood belonged to Mr Rogers, Fred also
Speaker 1: had dozens and dozens of television neighbors, each of whom
Speaker 1: demonstrated their own gifts and talents for the toddler audience.
Speaker 1: I have never not saying I've always been a to
Speaker 1: sing a song. It was all at first, you know.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a trick. My aunts and uncles
Speaker 1: and cousins would ask me to sing and Mr Rogers
Speaker 1: Neighborhood Francois Clemens played the police officer, the singing police officer.
Speaker 1: My nickname was Buttercup, and the older I get, the
Speaker 1: more I love that name. A little Buttercup. And they
Speaker 1: used to say, body, Cup, come over here, child and
Speaker 1: sing this song for me. And I would come over.
Speaker 1: I sing for my aunt Clara, my ant Hattie, my
Speaker 1: aunt Emma. Clemens is something of a phenomen a Grammy
Speaker 1: winning singer of opera and jazz. He founded the Harlem
Speaker 1: Spiritual Ensemble, which preserves and performs traditional American Negro spirituals.
Speaker 1: Francois was part of Mr Rogers Neighborhood for more than
Speaker 1: twenty years, but that footbath episode in nineteen six nine
Speaker 1: made him an icon. I had no idea that scene
Speaker 1: would have that kind of an effect. Everywhere I went,
Speaker 1: people wanted to tell me their private story about that scene.
Speaker 1: Somewhere having discussions in their homes and that scene came on.
Speaker 1: They said, Mom, look, Mom, Dad, look dad, there's Francois
Speaker 1: and Mr. Rogers with their feet in the same pool.
Speaker 1: One's black and once white. Yes they are, aren't They
Speaker 1: and their friends. But long before he met fred Francois
Speaker 1: was like a lot of the kids who would eventually
Speaker 1: grow up watching Mr. Rogers, He was lonely. Francois told
Speaker 1: me that his parents were clinically depressed, so we learned
Speaker 1: to look to other people for affection and care. Some
Speaker 1: of the things people say, Oh, there's nothing like a
Speaker 1: mother's love, Oh there's nothing like family. I questioned that
Speaker 1: from a very very young age. When my parents did
Speaker 1: not act right in the sense of trust and love
Speaker 1: and nurturing, I turned to a teacher, or to a
Speaker 1: social worker, or to a parent of one of my peers.
Speaker 1: They responded to me in a way that I thought
Speaker 1: my parents should have. But some of that care was
Speaker 1: a little bit more like charity than love, and growing
Speaker 1: up in America in the eighteen fifties meant that help
Speaker 1: was sometimes suffused with racism. The truth is the simple
Speaker 1: answer is I was two people in one and that
Speaker 1: was the one that was very sad. And to know
Speaker 1: that there are people who disliked me, who pushed me
Speaker 1: away simply because of my color, I could not deny it.
Speaker 1: I didn't try to deny it. But then there were
Speaker 1: those who said, oh, you need a new suit, Come
Speaker 1: come with us. We're gonna go buy you a new suit.
Speaker 1: Or they said, look at that boy's shoes. Come on,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna take you downtown and buy you
Speaker 1: a pair of shoes. It would have confused the average kid,
Speaker 1: but since my parents weren't doing it, and I knew
Speaker 1: that I needed a new suit, I had a sense
Speaker 1: of one to dress decently and be clean. So in
Speaker 1: my mind I said, I have to wait and see
Speaker 1: what they're gonna do. Who these people are they gonna
Speaker 1: push me away? Are they gonna see to it that
Speaker 1: I have a winter coat. Francois was singing at a
Speaker 1: church the first time he encountered Fred. When he invited
Speaker 1: me to come onto the program and to have a
Speaker 1: regular singing part, I said, Fred, I will be very
Speaker 1: happy to be on your program as long as it
Speaker 1: doesn't interfere with my singing, and he looked at me
Speaker 1: and he told me, lady, he said, Francois, that is
Speaker 1: the moment that I loved you, because you were not
Speaker 1: gonna kiss my ass, and that's what everybody else was doing.
Speaker 1: Those are his words. Officer Clemens first appeared in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood in August of nine. He says it took a
Speaker 1: while for him to get used to working with Fred Rogers.
Speaker 1: He was a very unusual positive energy. It was not negative,
Speaker 1: but it was just so damn unusual. And by that
Speaker 1: I mean those puppets. Uh caused me a lot of
Speaker 1: hours of thinking, what on earth was a grown man
Speaker 1: doing plan with those puppets. I'm a ghetto boy, that was.
Speaker 1: I knew some black men who well halfway trying to
Speaker 1: act right, but I never knew none who could play
Speaker 1: with no puppets, you know. So I could, I just
Speaker 1: couldn't wrap my head around it. And so I was
Speaker 1: looking at him. I was looking at him carefully. But
Speaker 1: ultimately Francois found in Fred a kindred spirit, a willing,
Speaker 1: creative collaborator, and a true friend who loved him in
Speaker 1: a way that Francois hadn't quite experienced. Before Fred Raw
Speaker 1: just recognized something in me before I did. When I
Speaker 1: got with Fred and he began to do these little
Speaker 1: extra things, that was over and beyond the call of Judy.
Speaker 1: I I was confused by that. Why is this white
Speaker 1: guy sticking with me? Why is he so persistently wonderful?
Speaker 1: So when he said you're special, and you know how
Speaker 1: just by being you and I like you who just
Speaker 1: the way you are? Can you make every day a
Speaker 1: special day? One instance in particular stands out to Francois
Speaker 1: many years later. Mr Rogers was rapping the show the
Speaker 1: way he always rapped the show, changing his shoes, removing
Speaker 1: a sweater. You've made it a special day for me,
Speaker 1: you know how, by just your being yourself. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: only one person in the whole world like you, and
Speaker 1: I like you just the way you are. See Tom,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how to explain it, except we
Speaker 1: had locked eyes all the way across this big studio,
Speaker 1: and I dared to say to myself, he's talking to me,
Speaker 1: But he talks. He says that every every time I
Speaker 1: come to a show that he's filming, he's saying that.
Speaker 1: Why was he saying that to me today? There was
Speaker 1: something in his voice, something in his eyes. It was
Speaker 1: important to me to ask him, Fred, were you talking
Speaker 1: to me? I had never had somebody say that to
Speaker 1: me in my whole life. Oh Lord, I can't tell you.
Speaker 1: When he said, yes, yes, I've been talking to you
Speaker 1: for two years and you heard me today, that was
Speaker 1: such a the lines explosion. I can't explain it any
Speaker 1: other way. It was inside of me, it was outside
Speaker 1: of me, it was in him, it was in our eyes.
Speaker 1: I saw divinity. That's the only thing I can tell people.
Speaker 1: I have never experienced anything like it since. And I
Speaker 1: just collapsed in his in his arms. For Francois, the
Speaker 1: prospect of being accepted fully and completely was a near
Speaker 1: religious experience, But it was also a complicated one because
Speaker 1: Francois had a secret, a big secret that he had
Speaker 1: been keeping from almost everyone. Would Fred accept him even
Speaker 1: if he knew that secret too, Would Fred truly like
Speaker 1: him just the way that he was. I remember calling
Speaker 1: Fred on the telephone. I said I've got to tell
Speaker 1: you something, and he said yes, And that's when I
Speaker 1: really said to him, I'm gay. Fred. He said to me,
Speaker 1: I will always love you, Francois. So that's not what
Speaker 1: we're discussing. What we are discussing is the role that
Speaker 1: you will be able to play on Mr rogers neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And what does it mean if you choose to come out.
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers loved and accepted Francois Clements and in nine
Speaker 1: it was a radical act to show a black man
Speaker 1: and a white man sharing a footpath, but having an
Speaker 1: openly gay man performing on a children's show that felt
Speaker 1: to Fred even riskier. And the thing that he impressed
Speaker 1: upon me was the advertisers there would be a normal
Speaker 1: pressure on them from certain corners in our society that
Speaker 1: condemn homosexuality. And the thing he said to me was, France,
Speaker 1: while they're going to say terrible things about you and
Speaker 1: about me and about our program. And he said, all
Speaker 1: of our work, all of our valuable work and research
Speaker 1: will be lost. Is that what you want? And I,
Speaker 1: of course no, of course not. Then he said you
Speaker 1: you cannot come out. You come out. They will not tolerate,
Speaker 1: they will not tolerate a gay person, and especially on
Speaker 1: a children's television program. It simply could not be done.
Speaker 1: How did that make you feel? It was one of
Speaker 1: the lowest, one of the lowest moments of my life.
Speaker 1: Realizing that, I think that was the moment I decided
Speaker 1: to go back into the closet and stay. Francois had
Speaker 1: spent years learning to love and accept himself, and here
Speaker 1: he was presenting a crucial part of that self to Fred.
Speaker 1: And though Fred reiterated his unconditional love for Francois, he
Speaker 1: still didn't believe that the wider world was ready to
Speaker 1: accept Francois just the way he was. Fred was faced
Speaker 1: with the question of weighing the needs of his friend
Speaker 1: with the preservation of his own larger mission, reaching as
Speaker 1: many children as possible. There were those in the black community,
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, who said to me, how important it
Speaker 1: is that there's a face on that children's show appearing
Speaker 1: fairly regularly. Francois the ghetto kid needs to know that
Speaker 1: they too can go from the ghetto to Mr. Rogers neighborhood.
Speaker 1: They they really impressed upon me how important it was
Speaker 1: that there would be no scandal, no disgrace to the race.
Speaker 1: Boy did I I zipped it up then, So, even
Speaker 1: though there were things going on a stone wall, I
Speaker 1: absolutely did not have the luxury of coming out. If
Speaker 1: I were going to be continue on Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And I've said this too many people who tried to say, well,
Speaker 1: he rejected you, and he would didn't want you on
Speaker 1: the program, and this is that blah blah. I can't
Speaker 1: tell you how much I thought about that. I say
Speaker 1: that was there was a period of time with when
Speaker 1: it was obsessive. I can't be myself, I can't have
Speaker 1: a normal life. What a sacrifice. Francois Clemens made an
Speaker 1: enormous sacrifice in a very real sense. That sacrifice may
Speaker 1: have been responsible for thirty years worth of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood,
Speaker 1: because who's to say how long a show with a
Speaker 1: gay black man would have even stayed on the air
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen sixties. And there's another irony that
Speaker 1: for all of Fred's stated commitment to commercial free television
Speaker 1: for kids, he still felt worried about protecting advertisers from
Speaker 1: the pressure of Francois coming out. So where did that
Speaker 1: leave Francois. He had to swallow his pain and he
Speaker 1: had to carry it. He had to accept this denial
Speaker 1: of honesty as the price of being a part of
Speaker 1: a work like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood that did do so
Speaker 1: much good for so many people. Fred Rogers of meant
Speaker 1: liberation for Francois Clemens, but not complete liberation that would
Speaker 1: be for Francois to find on his own. But he
Speaker 1: did learn from Fred. For nearly three decades, he watched
Speaker 1: Fred love the Clay, demonstrate practical care and real goodness,
Speaker 1: and he saw how the transmission of that care through
Speaker 1: millions of TV screens could have a domino effect. And
Speaker 1: he decided that that result was too good to endanger
Speaker 1: what I have made the same kind of personal sacrifice,
Speaker 1: would you? Francoise professional singing career took more and more
Speaker 1: of his time. His final scene on the show was
Speaker 1: in and he hadn't appeared dressed as a police officer
Speaker 1: in almost a decade. But in that last episode, he
Speaker 1: showed up at Mr Rogers porch just as Fred was
Speaker 1: starting to soak his feet. H you know, I've been
Speaker 1: sitting here thinking about different ways people have of showing
Speaker 1: love to each other and to themselves. I like to
Speaker 1: think of things like that, he Fred French or Clemens. Hi, welcome,
Speaker 1: thank you, How you doing fine? How are you today?
Speaker 1: My feet were tired, so I thought I'd just soaked
Speaker 1: them for a while in this water. Does it make
Speaker 1: him feel better? It does? Would you like to try? Sure?
Speaker 1: It does feel good? I was thinking about many different
Speaker 1: ways of saying I love you. Singing is one of
Speaker 1: my ways of saying I love you. Oh I know that.
Speaker 1: Do you have time to to give a song to
Speaker 1: my friend and me? I sure do. There are many
Speaker 1: ways to say I love you. There are many ways
Speaker 1: to say I care about anyways, so many ways, many
Speaker 1: ways to say I've sung it a million times and
Speaker 1: I still love it. There's the singing way to say
Speaker 1: I love you. I get such a dose a Fred love.
Speaker 1: That's what I call it. I'm so blessed, I'm very grateful.
Speaker 1: Many ways to say I love you. I'm so proud
Speaker 1: of you. Friends. Oh, thank you Fred. Next time they
Speaker 1: called it Fred time. He slowed a pace down and
Speaker 1: that gave him the opportunity to express his love and
Speaker 1: care for other people and reach out and touch our
Speaker 1: hearts as well. Finding Fred is produced by Transmitter Media.
Speaker 1: The team is Dan O'Donnell, Jordan Bailey, and Mattie Foley.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Sarah Nick's editorial help from Michael Garoffalo.
Speaker 1: The executive producer for Transmitter Media is Gretta Cone. Executive
Speaker 1: producers at Fatherly are Simon Isaacs and Andrew Berman. Music
Speaker 1: by Blue Dot Sessions and Alison Layton Brown And thanks
Speaker 1: to the team at I Heart. I'm Carvelo Wallace. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.