Maysville Presbyterian

Fred Rogers Before the Neighborhood

While a senior at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, Fred McFeely Rogers (1928-2003) became “appalled by what were labeled ‘children’s programs’—pies in faces and slapstick.” As Rogers later told Eva Stimson, editor of Presbyterians Today, “That’s when I decided to go into television....Children deserved better.”

In 1953, the music composition major and Latrobe, Pennsylvania, native was hired by Pittsburgh’s WQED to co-produce The Children’s Corner, a half-hour television program hosted by Josie Carey. Rogers worked behind the scenes as organist and puppeteer, recording episodes that emphasized creativity and self-esteem. Around the same time he began taking classes at Pittsburgh

Theological Seminary and graduate courses in child development, “to deepen what I could bring to television.”

Carey’s lyrics and dance, running weekly alongside Rogers’ music

and puppets from 1953 to 1961, gained national attention after The

Children’s Corner was syndicated by NBC. Rogers continued attending

classes at Pittsburgh Seminary—sometimes during his lunch hour—and

in 1962 was ordained with a charge to work with children and families

through the media. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, with the

Reverend Fred Rogers appearing on camera sporting his

iconic sweater and sneakers, began broadcasting on public

television in February 1968, fifty years ago this year.

As Stimson wrote, Fred Rogers “never served in

a traditional role of pastor, but through television

[brought] his simple message of affirmation and

acceptance to a ‘congregation’ of millions.”

Heritage Sunday is an annual day of celebration set aside by the General Assembly of the

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). See rare digitized film of The Children’s Corner, download past

bulletin inserts, and learn more about Presbyterian history at www.history.pcusa.org/hs 

From lamentation to action 

 the 2020 General Assembly called the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

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All around us, miracles happen and God empowers life, thanks to exacting conditions. We know of caterpillars and butterflies, but did you know about these details shared by Gayle Boss in Wild Hope (Paraclete)?

“For about a month each female [monarch butterfly] plants four hundred or so eggs. ...Ninety-nine in a hundred... perish. But on the third day, from the one remaining, a caterpillar the size of a rice grain breaks.

“She devours the egg casing, then the milkweed leaves beneath her feet. In those leaves is a steroid that makes her body brightly striped — and toxic to her predators. Ravenous, she eats milkweed unceasingly for twelve days, bulging her skin to splitting. Five skins later, two thousand times her birth weight, she stops. …

“Crawling to a suitable twig or ledge, she hangs head down, shaping herself into a question mark. One last her skin falls away. This new one is not a soft, stripy, caterpillar skin but a polished, jade-green shell studded with a gold tiara.

“Because she is enclosed and still, changes that had already begun within her worm like body erupt outward. Wings! Long, delicate legs! After twelve days in the chrysalis she is a new creature.” Praise God!