Remembering Mister Rogers

Marie posted this link of Mr. Rogers:

It reminded me how I was fortunate enough to have met him.

My mom’s side is Catholic, but my Dad’s side is Presbyterian—Dad’s family, not Dad—Dad is what my mom liked to call a Seventh-day Absentist—every seventh day, he was absent from church. After Ken was confirmed Mom would allow us to go to either church. In high school, when my brother had a car, this meant trips every Sunday to the Korean Presbyterian Church.

Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was filmed at the local public television station of Pittsburgh and he was ordained a Presbyterian minister. He belonged to the Sixth Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh located in Squirrel Hill. At the time, in the afternoon on Sundays the Korean Presbyterian Church hadn’t scraped enough money yet to buy their own church so the services would be out of the Sixth Church. Sometimes Mr. Rogers would stay late for Korean Sunday school kids.

One time he made a guest appearance with us high schoolers. He sat down and had a suitcase with all his puppets on his lap. We’d ask him to do all the voices of our childhood: King Friday, Queen Saturday, Henrietta Pussycat, etc., and with a nervous smile, he’d reach into the suitcase and the requested character from the Neighborhood of Make Believe would pop up from behind the open case and address us. Even Daniel Striped Tiger made an appearance even though he was very worn-through and extremely shy.

Some people are exactly who they appear to be, and Mr. Rogers was one of them. It was pretty awesome.

He was pretty awesome. 🙂

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.