“You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you. There’s only one person in this whole world like you. And people can like you exactly as you are.”
The world is exactly how Mister Rogers described a neighborhood could be, it is “a place where you at times feel worried, scared, and unsafe.” Fred Rogers– humanity’s goodness and moral compass in the bleak, seemingly hopeless world that currently surrounds us. One singular human being who accepted the challenge to change lives and change the world by using his unique gifts and positive interactions through love, kindness and inclusion. For the past 50 years the soft-spoken voice of Mister Rogers has worked through compassion and has been a great source of mental health– albeit aimed at preschoolers he was something of a radical, he tactfully hi-lighted issues such as racial integration, divorce, disabilities, assassination and even feelings. All the issues that still plague our wold today.
Fred Rogers was a man who felt the “root of everything was love or the lack of”, he was an ordained Presbyterian minister who never sought out to be the nicest man in television, but after studying in child development, he thought children needed a safe place for their deep feelings and the issues that weighed heavy at the time. He met them with songs like “I can stop if I want to”, and “What do you do with the mad that you feel”. He created a show that children wanted to watch where the craziest thing he did was change his sweater and his shoes. It was the “safe place” children needed, something they could count on when they turned the dial to PBS. Watching as the arial view of a colorful wooden neighborhood with a singular house came into view. You knew on the other side of that door was a friend, an adult who understood your feelings and would talk to you about all the things that you felt helpless against and did not understand. He would tell you not to give up on people- they are just like you. Don’t you wish a friend like Mr. Rogers were still around?
Fred Rogers died of stomach cancer in 2003 at the age of 74. He began his work with children in 1963 and continued being the neighbor with a voice of reason through Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood until 2001.
On March 20, 2018, on what would have been Rogers’ 90th birthday, Focus Films released the trailer for a documentary scheduled to hit theaters on June 8th, titled “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” This is the official trailer and your invitation to celebrate that warm, sweet friend and television icon from your childhood. Filled with never before seen footage, the trailer alone is hailed by social media to be the 2 minute tearjerker that doesn’t require sound to pull at your heartstrings. Go ahead and grab your tissues (it’s okay, we’ll wait!), take a trolley ride with “all the feels” a to a place where you’ve made the day special by just being you. Won’t you be my neighbor?
**While you wait for the movie, read one of the few biographies published by checking it out from the library!