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Fred Rogers was a curious man, six feet tall
and without pretense (虚伪). He liked to pray, to
play the piano, to swim, and to write, and he somehow lived in a different
world than I did. We became friends for some 20 years, and I made lifelong
friends with his wife, Joanne. I remember thinking that it seemed as if Fred
had access to another realm (领域) like the way pigeons have
some special magnetic compass that helps them find home.
Fred died in 2003, somewhat quickly, of
stomach cancer. He was 74. "Just don't make Fred into a saint (圣人)," That has become Joanne's refrain (叠句). 91 now, still full of energy, she lives alone in the same roomy
apartment, in the university section of Pittsburgh, that she and Fred moved
into after they raised their two boys. Throughout her 50-year marriage to Fred,
she wasn't the type to hang out on the set or attend production meetings. That
was Fred's thing. He had his career, and she had hers as a concert pianist. For
decades she toured the country with her college classmate, Jeannine Morrison,
as a piano duo; they didn't retire the performance until 2008.
"If you make him out to be a saint,
people might not know how hard he worked," Joanne said. Disciplined,
focused; a perfectionist — an artist. That was the Fred she and the cast and
crew knew. "I think people think of Fred as a child-development expert,"
David Newell, the actor who played Mr. "Speedy Delivery" McFeely,
told me recently. "As a moral example maybe. But as an artist? I don't
think they think of that." that was the Fred I came to know. Creating, the
creative impulse (冲动), and the creative process
were our common interests. He wrote or co-wrote all the scripts for the program
— all 33 years of it. He wrote the melodies. He wrote the lyrics. He structured
a week of programming around a single theme, many of them difficult topics,
like war, divorce, or death.
I don't know that he cared whether people saw
him as an artist. He seemed more intent (急切的) that people not see him
at all. The focus was always on you. Or children. Or the tiny things. It was
hard to see Fred.
I like you just the way you are. One day he
told me where that core message came from. His grandfather, Fred Brooks
McFeely, who like the rest of the Rogers family lived in Latrobe, Pennsylvania,
about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh. "He was a character," he said. "Oh,
a lot of me came from him."
His grandfather represented a life of risk and
adventure, the very things Fred's boyhood lacked. He was a lonely kid, an only
child until he was 11, when his sister came. He was bullied. Here comes Fat
Freddie! He was sickly. He had asthma. He was not allowed to play outside by
himself. He spent much of his childhood in his bedroom.
He had music, and he had puppets to keep
himself amused. He didn't need much. He was expected to fill his father's
shoes, become his business partner at the brick company. "My dad was
pretty much Mr. Latrobe," he told me. "He worked hard to accomplish
all that he did, and I've always felt that that was way beyond me. And yet I'm
so grateful that he didn't push me to do the kinds of things that he did or to
become a miniature (缩小的) version of him. It
certainly would have been miniature."
Fred wanted to be like his grandfather. "He
taught me all kinds of really neat stuff!" he told me. "I remember one
day my grandmother and my mother were telling me to get down, or not to climb,
and my grandfather said: ‘Let the kid climb on the wall! He's got to learn to
do things for himself!' I heard that. I will never forget that. What a support
that was. He had a lot of stone walls on his place." "I think it was
when I was leaving one time to go home after our time together," Fred told
me, "that my grandfather said to me: ‘You know, you made this day a really
special day. Just by being yourself. There's only one person in the world like
you. And I happen to like you just the way you are."
