Fred Rogers

Remembering Fred Rogers, 

born March 20, 1928 and passed away February 27, 2003.

Fred McFeely Rogers, known professionally as Mister Rogers, was an American tv personality, Presbyterian minister and author. He was the creator, showrunner, and host of the preschool tv series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which ran from 1968 to 2001.

Born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Fred earned a bachelor's degree in music from Rollins College in 1951 and began his tv career at NBC in New York City, returning to Pittsburgh in 1953 to work for children's programming at NET (later PBS) television station WQED. He graduated from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary with a bachelor's degree in divinity in 1962 and became a Presbyterian minister in 1963. He attended the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Child Development, where he began his thirty-year collaboration with child psychologist Margaret McFarland. He also helped develop the children's shows The Children's Corner (1955) for WQED in Pittsburgh and Misterogers (1963) in Canada for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 1968, he returned to Pittsburgh and adapted the format of his Canadian series to create Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. It ran for 33 years and was critically acclaimed for focusing on children's emotional and physical concerns, such as death, sibling rivalry, school enrollment and divorce.

His work in children's television has been widely lauded, and he received more than forty honorary degrees and several awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 1997 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999. Fred influenced many writers and producers of children's tv shows, and his broadcasts provided comfort during tragic events, even after his death.

He died of stomach cancer at the age of 74.