{"id":2718,"date":"2018-11-28T09:05:49","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T14:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/?p=2718"},"modified":"2023-08-17T09:49:27","modified_gmt":"2023-08-17T13:49:27","slug":"i-never-got-to-work-with-fred-rogers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/?p=2718","title":{"rendered":"Everything We Need to Know We Learned from Mister Rogers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mr.<\/a><\/p>\n

As a New York City publicist who specializes in on-screen entertainment for kids, I\u2019ve worked with some of the most popular and successful shows in the children\u2019s TV playground for decades. Though my experiences working with the different kids\u2019 brands my team and I have represented are unique and each one is a gem in its own right, I found that promoting Fred Rogers and the 50th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of his\u00a0Mister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood<\/i>\u00a0this year to be a labor of love. It helped give me a spring in my step on my morning commute. It was a good feeling. A very good feeling.<\/p>\n

Mister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood<\/i>, that widely\u00a0and long beloved children\u2019s series, was and always will be inextricably linked to Fred Rogers, the man\u00a0on TV with whom I often visited as a child myself. Publicizing it has been like\u00a0celebrating a\u00a0dear\u00a0old friend.\u00a0I never got to work with Fred directly, but it dawned on me one day in looking over an email about the freshest batch of \u201clove letters\u201d we secured from media across the country for Fred Rogers Productions\u00a0around the 50th<\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0anniversary milestone that I was now part of the fabric of the show\u2019s history, woven into the tapestry with those both before and behind the camera, who lovingly helped shape and amplify the series, extending the wisdom and mission of the man at its center.<\/p>\n

This has been the \u201cyear of Fred\u201d \u2013 from the PBS documentary and the one from Morgan Neville on the big screen to the Forever postage stamp, the Paley Center, the Google Doodle, the Jeopardy! category, and other such public celebrations and reflections. And all this Fred feting will continue strongly into 2019 with the feature film starring Tom Hanks as Fred, a new book of Mister Rogers\u2019 poetry and more.<\/p>\n

In working to shine a spotlight on the series in its 50th<\/sup>\u00a0year, I\u00a0got to\u00a0meet Mr.\u00a0McFeely\u00a0(David Newell), talk with\u00a0TriStar\u00a0Pictures execs about the best time to release the news\u00a0about Hanks\u00a0being cast for the upcoming movie, and have dinner with Newell and Nicholas Ma, Yo-Yo Ma\u2019s son, both of whom appeared on the show \u2013\u00a0but the real treat (and trip!) was getting to promote the work of\u00a0the incomparable\u00a0Fred Rogers.<\/p>\n

And though one of Mister Rogers\u2019 main messages was always \u201cyou are special,\u201d it quickly became apparent from the\u00a0PR\u00a0<\/a>campaign we drove that my own love for Mister Rogers and the diverse, socially-conscious, \u201cwoke\u201d-before-its-time TV neighborhood\u00a0he created, wasn\u2019t special or unique, but rather universal, something broadly\u00a0and deeply\u00a0shared by\u00a0so many\u00a0from my own generation, one of\u00a0the first\u00a0to call this remarkable TV friend our own, as well as\u00a0all\u00a0the other generations with which he so\u00a0meaningfully\u00a0connected over his\u00a0career-long\u00a0commitment to serving children.<\/p>\n

That 2018 has been Fred\u2019s year is especially apropos. The concept that everything we need to know we learned in kindergarten seems to need some extra reinforcing these days. Politics are a reflection of and on our society. Instead of political heroes, kids today are getting the message that disparaging or bullying others, rather than helping to support and raise them up, as Fred always modeled for us, is accepted or encouraged. And though politics is a grown-ups\u2019 sandbox, it\u2019s kids who have repeatedly come up in the crosshairs, ground zero in the scary ongoing narrative \u2013 whether its putting an end to the DACA protection program, siccing ICE on immigrant families where they live or work or, most recently, the forced separation of children from their parents at the border. From this distinctly non-neighborly stance, it\u2019s a slippery slide to violent crimes against certain groups of people \u2013 like the tragic shooting of black shoppers at a Kentucky supermarket and of congregants at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, hometown to Fred and\u00a0Mister Rogers Neighborhood<\/i>, in the past month alone.<\/p>\n

Mister Rogers said, \u201cWe live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It\u2019s easy to say, \u2018It\u2019s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.\u2019 Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Publicizing the 50th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of\u00a0Mister\u00a0Rogers\u2019\u00a0Neighborhood<\/i>\u00a0has brought\u00a0back so many fond memories\u00a0\u2013\u00a0speedy delivery! \u2013\u00a0for me, for the media covering the story and for audiences across the generations. Fred\u2019s wisdom and messages of kindness or expressions of care, as he referred to them, not only still resonate with so many, they\u2019re needed now more than ever. And by taking a page from Mister Rogers, we could all help set the stage for far more beautiful days ahead.<\/p>\n

\n

This article is also on\u00a0CommPro.<\/strong><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a New York City publicist who specializes in on-screen entertainment for kids, I\u2019ve worked with some of the most popular and successful shows in the children\u2019s TV playground for decades. Though my experiences working with the different kids\u2019 brands my team and I have represented are unique and each one is a gem in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-2718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-inspiration","entry","no-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2718"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2729,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions\/2729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2718"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandcommunications.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fpost_series&post=2718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}