A Beautiful Monday In The Neighborhood

Over the weekend I received that always forwarded stupid email about the late, great Mr. Rogers' secret past. You know the one; that he was a sniper during the Vietnam war with many confirmed kills and that he always wore long sleeve shirts and sweaters to hide all the tattoos on his arms and neck. A ten second internet search easily debunks the rumors but the type of person who just hits forward and subjects his address book to that kind of spam is not exactly a critical thinker.

I remember reading a piece about Fred Rogers on MentalFloss.com last year that is actually worth sharing. It was called 15 Reasons Why Mr. Rogers Was The Best Neighbor Ever. I'll repost three of those reasons here.


He Made Thieves Think Twice
According to a TV Guide piece on him, Fred Rogers drove a plain old Impala for years. One day, however, the car was stolen from the street near the TV station. When Rogers filed a police report, the story was picked up by every newspaper, radio and media outlet around town. Amazingly, within 48 hours the car was left in the exact spot where it was taken from, with an apology on the dashboard. It read, “If we’d known it was yours, we never would have taken it.”


He Watched His Figure to the Pound!
In covering Rogers’ daily routine (waking up at 5; praying for a few hours for all of his friends and family; studying; writing, making calls and reaching out to every fan who took the time to write him; going for a morning swim; getting on a scale; then really starting his day), writer Tom Junod explained that Mr. Rogers weighed in at exactly 143 pounds every day for the last 30 years of his life. He didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t eat the flesh of any animals, and was extremely disciplined in his daily routine. And while I’m not sure if any of that was because he’d mostly grown up a chubby, single child, Junod points out that Rogers found beauty in the number 143. According to the piece, Rogers came “to see that number as a gift… because, as he says, “the number 143 means ‘I love you.’ It takes one letter to say ‘I’ and four letters to say ‘love’ and three letters to say ‘you.’ One hundred and forty-three.”


He Was Genuinely Curious about Others
Mister Rogers was known as one of the toughest interviews because he’d often befriend reporters, asking them tons of questions, taking pictures of them, compiling an album for them at the end of their time together, and calling them after to check in on them and hear about their families. He wasn’t concerned with himself, and genuinely loved hearing the life stories of others. Amazingly, it wasn’t just with reporters. Once, on a fancy trip up to a PBS exec’s house, he heard the limo driver was going to wait outside for 2 hours, so he insisted the driver come in and join them (which flustered the host). On the way back, Rogers sat up front, and when he learned that they were passing the driver’s home on the way, he asked if they could stop in to meet his family. According to the driver, it was one of the best nights of his life—the house supposedly lit up when Rogers arrived, and he played jazz piano and bantered with them late into the night. Further, like with the reporters, Rogers sent him notes and kept in touch with the driver for the rest of his life.


I wonder how many people are out there walking Fred's narrow path these days. The world still seems a little less cool without him. You can read the whole article here.

Comments

[HeatherMichelle]

I will never be as great a person as Mr. Rogers.

[Sunny Days]

Thanks for posting this, Bean. It makes you realize how few exceptionally good people there are in the world and how we should all strive to make ourselves better people.

[Geo]

Mr. Rogers did the one thing most of us need to do more of; not just lend and ear but truly listen.

[JRD]

In the time since I've read that article on Mental Floss, I've striven to be a little more like him and it's not easy to be good to the core like that. I don't think I'll ever achieve it, but thank you for one more life lesson, Mister Rogers.

[Vic Rattler]

Wow, that seems incredibly intrusive.
Hi, I've met you once and I'm going to be involved in the rest of your life, enjoy.

[Ana]

Thanks Bean! I must say my favorite is He Watched His Figure to the Pound!
So cute!!!

[cathy g]

every once in a while, i will come across mr. roger's on PBS and i love that show just as much as i did when i was a kid.

143, bean!

[Kings Fan]

Bean, you did tell us you were going to provide us with a nicer post after several dark ones. The content was nice... but it was still about someone who's DEAD. I'm just saying...

[Edmund F]

Besides all those fun facts, did you hear that Fred Rogers was in Vietnam and shot a bunch of people. Funny you haven't heard of that.

[Jamie McD]

Thank you for your post about Mr. Rogers. I watched his show religiously when I was young, and know many of the songs he wrote/sung on the show - even to this day. One song, "F-R-I-E-N-D Special" ensured that I never misspelled "friend".

I have a toddler now and I TiVO reruns of Mr. Rogers (as he said so many years ago - we need to watch the episodes as a family!). My son is mesmerized by him and the show. He has a way of talking through the camera and to the individual - like you and he are the only ones in the room.

He was one of a kind - we are a better world because of him.

[dana]

i was born and raised about 10 miles from his family home. we always got a kick out of knowing he was from our neck of the woods.

[ARSENAL MF'ers!]

wow.
i am such an ass.
thanks jerk.

[Christina]

With all the amazing and cool facts about Mr. Rogers, it just blows my mind that the forward idiots out there keep sending the same false crap around year after year. Why can't they send something actually true and informative? Oh wait, the forward monkeys aren't exactly the brightest of the bunch.

[Benjamin Wagner]

Meeting Mister Rogers on the eve of my 30th birthday certainly changed MY life. My brother and I are in post-production on a documentary ("Mister Rogers & Me") that explores that, as he said, "There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person."

[Julius Marx]

you can actually see his address to congress and them giving him the money on the YouTubes. It's a killer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q

I just can't believe that someone in this day and age can make a 6 min speech to jaded, greedy congressmen and actually change their mind.
Fred was one in a million. He gave the commencement speech for my class when I graduated Graduate School. He was the only reason I showed up.

[Julius Marx]

Um... when I said "Congress" in my previous post, I meant the United States Senate Subcommittee on Communications.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog commenting...

[TC]

I think your blog is great. Even though not all informations are interesting, but one like entry I enjoy very much.

-The animal responsible for the most human deaths worldwide is the mosquito.