I bring up Fred Rogers a lot—I think about him a lot—and when I do, people usually say something like, “Oh, I love Mister Rogers too. Such a good man. We need more like him.” Absolutely. We miss his kindness. We want more of the compassion he represents in our daily lives. We want our world to be a bit more like his pretend one.
But what’s remarkable to me is not that he was other-worldly; it’s that he was this-worldly. A loved but lonely child. A man a-tuned to the emotional needs of children in a frightening world because he too was frightened. Fred was able to effectuate the many factors necessary to reach these children and help prepare them for this difficult world. While there are many good resources to read about Fred’s work*, I’d like to reflect on a few aspects that I’ve grown to value.
Fred Rogers is instructional for people who make things. He was an intentional creator. A designer and business person. He identified a problem, conducted research and worked with experts, formed a worldview, developed a product and its delivery platform, and nurtured his body of work with focus and consistent integrity for over thirty years.
*Some good reading options include Tom Junod’s Esquire piece, which the (2019) Tom Hanks movie was based on, Peaceful Neighbor which talks about his radical aspects, and The Good Neighbor, a clunky read that contains good biographical info.
Ambition
Fred Rogers was an ambitious person. The problem he worked on was massive: nurturing the social and emotional growth of children in a world getting louder. His medium, television, had promise. But the business model of his peers, selling to the kids he sought to serve, was an unacceptable option. Compelled to try to recreate this medium, he aligned with fledgling educational television underdogs. The road he chose was not easy.
Yet the scope of his effort was appropriately scaled to his ability to deliver. The locus of his ambition was writing. It was in the topics he chose and the way he chose to talk about them. By focusing his ambition on the message, he could scale without constraint.
This is in stark contrast to the ambition of Jim Henson. Henson’s ambition — his was distinct from that of Sesame Street’s visionaries Joan Ganz Cooney, Llyod Morrisett, and Jon Stone — was towards innovative forms of puppetry, immersive worlds, innovative technologies, and complex production. These interests led to ever-greater resource needs, at times driving him to make things he didn’t really care about to fund the ones he did.
Fred’s production was decidedly lean, homemade, and low-tech. His sets were modest, his puppets basic. While an auteur uses their imagination to guide a complex and expensive production to externalize their visions for others to consume, Fred could rely on the imagination of his viewers to bring his stories to life. A far more economic approach.
Unencumbered
Fred’s choices maximized his freedom. Thrift was key. His product was not expensive to produce. He provided much of the core labor and the rest could be done by a small team. His actors had other roles in the business. David Newell (Mr. McFeely) also ran public relations. Others performed the show’s music. He didn’t let the business or production get away from him and become a thing that needed excessive resources to sustain.
By reducing the funding needed to operate, he could focus on the work. It’s easy to call this non-commercial, but it’s more about avoiding dependencies on things that could impede his mission. The result was that he remained beholden to no one but his audience.
Fred remained a practitioner. It allowed him to retain control over implementation and quality, keep the show’s voice intact across decades, and avoid getting rusty. He wrote most of the shows and much of the music. He didn’t let it get away from him.
The control he retained through restraint allowed him to make the program he wanted and control its terms. He could talk about what he wanted without the need for consensus from stakeholders.
The consistency of the show, including its stylistic consistency, and the broad back catalog, allowed him to take extended time off when he needed. He could carve out space for himself to get off the production wheel. And toward the end, when he wanted to wind things down, he was able to let the work end on his terms.
Watch an interview with Fred from WQED’s Pittsburgh History Series.
Confidence and discomfort
Like all honest people, Fred doubted himself. He was uncomfortable: the loudness of the world, the memories of a bullied child. More comfortable as a puppeteer, he increasingly disliked being on camera as he aged.
Yet despite this personal doubt, he had confidence of purpose. A willingness to be uncomfortable in order to connect with the children he served. Sometimes it’s easier to be an outsider, free from convention and with less eyes on you. But Fred was firmly rooted in the mainstream, trudging upstream to speak of about things that mattered with the youngest children. His respect for them gave him the strength to overcome his discomfort.
Maybe he was able to do this because he created joy for himself in his work. He could have created better-looking puppets and worked with more skilled puppeteers. He could have hired people to polish it all up. But that wasn’t the point. He needed that expression for himself — it brought him joy — and he was comfortable with its imperfection. He knew the kids were too. He didn’t need more.
Masculinity
Our real world is awash in violence and trauma caused by men. It’s men who start the wars, drive extractive business practices, abuse their families, march with tiki torches, and shoot up schools. Entitled men. Coercive men. Fragile, broken men. Men who build their inner and outer value, in one way or the other, on their power over others. And it’s part of a vicious cycle, constructing a narrow and damaging model of masculinity.
Fred’s work confronted toxic masculinity preemptively. He was deeply concerned about nurturing the ability to feel and address one’s emotions in healthy ways. He understood that people who have ways to accept and process difficult feelings can avoid destructive behavior. That people who know how to receive and give love create sustaining bonds that help them and their loved ones survive difficulty. That understanding the world around you and the people in it builds resilient communities. These were the skills his programming sought to seed in the very young.
Fred’s self operated at another level. I grew up with the paper-thin sitcom caricatures of cool, self-centered, virile manliness of the 80s that modeled an extremely narrow range of acceptable male behavior and presentation. The latest in a long tradition of rebels, bad boys, CEOs, tough guys, cowboys, and revolutionaries. At least that’s what the story seemed to be as a boy growing up in the suburbs. But the truth is, there have always been gentle men. Having examples of men who were compassionate and emotionally generous, who embraced attributes more assigned to femininity at that time (and largely still today) was emboldening.
My father, though tired and stressed then by the things that tire and stress me now, was (and is) one example. Fred is another. His masculinity, while in some ways very traditional, was in tune with healthy emotional expression and out-of-tune with the day. He built his authority upon his avoidance of force. On his kneeling down. On his child-like sincerity. As I grew from boy to man, this was the tradition of masculinity I valued and hoped to align with.
Clarity
And in general, I envy his clarity. He knew his mission. He had an area of focus, a well-informed point of view, and a medium through which he could work.
He was plain in his language and affect. It made him approachable by the people he was interested in, those who weren’t the “fancy people”. He knew what he wanted to say and perfected the delivery. But while his language was plain, his message was rich. Listen to all the ideas he packs into this brief closing:
Each child could feel him speaking straight to them, saying “I see you. You’re important.” Setting the expectation that they deserve love. He’s talking to me there too. He’s encouraging me to feel the love of the people that care about me. He’s reassuring me that my efforts can contribute to this world. And he’s reminding me that I need to take care of myself and the people around me.
I find in Fred a successful navigator of the problems I work on with myself. That’s quite literally the meaning of a role model: one who models the kind of role you hope to fill. How he focused his ambition. How he retained control over his work. How he found balance between his confidence and self-doubt. How he operated as a gentle man amid toxicity. How he found clarity. These are the things I think about when I think about Fred. Such a good man. So much more.
This piece was originally published in 2019 on Medium.
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