Just the absolute love in the eyes of all the celebrities in the room as they stare at this simple man.
The Senator in charge of the committee who were considering not giving any more funding to PBS is obviously a very tough, hard customer. Mr. Rogers talked to him for six minutes, and the guy gave him over twice as much as he'd originally been asking for.
When he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999, the person inducting him was Jeff Erlanger, a quadriplegic child who appeared on his show 18 years earlier. When he rolled on stage, you see the absolute joy in Rogers' face at the surprise. His actions? He gave Erlanger a hug and said "I'm so glad to see you." The clip is a must see; Rogers doesn't even bother with the stairs as he climbs on stage, almost on the verge of tears of joy, to say hello to Erlanger.
As someone said in the comments to the video, while it could be seen that rushing the stage at your own tribute is wrong, "when Mr. Rogers does the wrong thing, it turns out to be the right thing for the right reasons". After all, Mr. Rogers isn't "rushing the stage", all he is thinking is that he wants to say hello to a friend he hasn't seen in 18 years!
When his car was stolen, it was immediately returned when they realized whose it was, with a fresh coat of wax and a note of apology attached. Possibly. While it's probably an urban legend, what's so heartwarming is that it's not at all difficult to think it could be true about him.
While on a packed subway going home, someone recognized him and everyone started to sing his theme song. This was dramatized in the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.
The story this former employee relates. Many of the men working for Mr. Rogers would make fun of him behind his back for being too soft and the like - but in private, they would sneak into where he was rehearsing and privately ask for personal advice ranging from impotence to marital troubles... all while talking to his puppets, at that. On top of that, he never showed any sign of having had those conversations with them, as a way to respect their privacy.
A bonus story from one of his employees comes from an early 1990s issue of Model Railroader. An employee built a smaller scale model of Trolley and modified the model town from the opening credits to include a track to run it on. This was all done without permission, and the show ran on the adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". He demonstrated his modification in front of Mister Rogers without telling anyone else in advance; Rogers loved it instantly.
A story widely told is that a fundamentalist priest/pastor/whatever called on Mr. Rogers to castigate a nearby group of homosexuals. Without missing a beat, Rogers turned to said people and said "God loves you just the way you are." He was an ordained Presbyterian minister (although he didn't preach—after his ordination, he was charged with continuing his television work) and belonged to a More Light congregation, a movement within the church dedicated to greater inclusion and participation of LGBT persons.
Clemmons asked him, "Fred, were you talking to me?" "Yes, I have been talking to you for years," Rogers said, as Clemmons recalls. "But you heard me today." "It was like telling me I'm OK as a human being," Clemmons says. "That was one of the most meaningful experiences I'd ever had."
Earlier in his career, Rogers had advised Clemmons to keep his homosexuality a secret and not go to gay bars as he had been doing, but only because it would have been dangerous to Clemmons' career to be a gay man on a children's show in that era. Rogers did not want to be forced to fire him to placate angry parents or politicians.
Fred Rogers wasn't particularly known to like parodies of his program. But he liked Eddie Murphy's parody so much (recognizing that it was being done out of affection) that he even visited him on the SNL set, to tell him that he liked Murphy's parody.
A minor one but anyone who has browsed the internet will tell you that the comments section of almost anything is ripe for arguments, insults, bizarre logic, and attracts many terrible elements including threats. Yet in the (since-removed) video where Fox commentators try to make Mr Rogers seem like he was a bad influence for children, almost everyone is united in defending him and saying what a positive impact he had on their lives. Mr Rogers: The man so nice and beloved that even the internet can't find anything bad to say about him.
The comments sections for most shows, as noted above, are full of snarking, Ship-to-Ship Combat, people insulting the characters, writers, and each other, Misaimed Fandom...look up a clip of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and it will almost exclusively be people singing his praises.
4chan is known for being effectively a pit of pure, festering evil. But if you insult Mr. Rogers, they will ban you.
Here's a whole list of heartwarming moments for Mr. Rogers. This is guaranteed to make you feel a little bit better about humanity.
In this article for Guideposts, Mr. Rogers explains the origins of his Catchphrase, "You made this day a special day just by being yourself." His grandfather said it to him word-for-word when he was eight, and Fred remembered it all his life. So when he got a job in children's TV, he wanted "to offer children the same kind of reassurance, encouragement and sense of self-worth." He succeeded.
This Cracked article as well as the comments attached to it demonstrate the same love Mr Rogers always would have wanted for all of us. Even the comments section of that article qualifies. One user decided to troll the others. On a normal Cracked article, that'd be an idiotic thing to do. This time, though, this was the response:
You are unique and wonderful just the way you are. You deserve to love and to be loved, and nothing can ever change that.
A comment in this reddit thread about why Mr. Rogers always announced out loud that he was feeding his fish (because he got a letter from a blind girl who worried they weren't being fed when she didn't hear him say it).
It's funny how Mr. Rogers's words end up carrying through to your adulthood. I was once had a co-worker who was being a total jerk to everyone. When he turned on me, I let him have it! I said, "You are not acting like the person Mr. Rogers knew you could be." He stood there flat-footed in shock. .... "Damn, that was harsh man." About 30 minutes later he personally apologized to each person, one by one.
True or not, the fact that it's totally believable just indicates how much everyone loved Mr. Rogers.
According to one story, Rogers invited his limo driver, Billy, to a dinner hosted by a network executive, so that he wouldn't have to sit and wait for two hours. Afterwards, he rode in the limo's front seat to talk to Billy, and when he learned that they'd be passing Billy's family's house along the way to the hotel, Rogers asked if they could stop over so he could meet them. The affair became an impromptu party. Neighbors brought treats and Rogers entertained them by playing jazz piano. A few years later, when Rogers learned that Billy was dying of AIDS, he took time to call him in the hospital.
Joan Rivers, famous for her sarcastic and often offensive humor, interviewed Mr. Rogers and was quickly reduced by his kind and sincere words to a star-struck, tongue-tied, flustered fangirl.
A Twitch chatter essentially summed up the entire feel of the Twitch marathon — the fact that it could make a bunch of grown people feel welcomed and loved by the same man who made them feel such when they were younger.
When you permanently move to the land of make-believe back in 2003 but your show intended for kids makes a bunch of young adults on twitch feel loved again and realize they're important in 2017.
If you really think about it, Everything about Mr. Rogers is this: He was a very nice and kind man who wanted to make the world a better place, and spent his time teaching children on his show at their level and understanding them, and incorporating morals of just being a good person. There are others who even think it'd be impossible for him to ever be angry, and even when he did confirm once that he too does get angry, it was more to the fact other people are hurt. There's a reason the world (and the internet) worships him.
More importantly is that although his primary audience were children, his message resonates with even adults decades after they stop watching his show. That's how truly powerful he was.
His importance and influence within his home city of Pittsburgh is so great that he has a 10 foot tall statue dedicated to him, and his influence is felt through several buildings and museums through the city. WQED, where he filmed his show, is virtually a shrine to his legacy, and to make up for PBS no longer running episodes of the show, they frequently produce specials in his honor.
The simple fact that the documentary based on Mr. Rogers' life, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, has garnered near-universal acclaim from professional critics and audiences alike on websites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, which is generally a rare occurrence in and of itself. The Rotten Tomatoes critics' consensus deserves a mention as well:
Won't You Be My Neighbor? takes a fittingly patient and honest look at the life and legacy of a television pioneer whose work has enriched generations.
PBS' documentary "It's You I Like" is also noteworthy. Among other things, it features several very blue comedians, including Sarah Silverman, utterly dorking out about how much they love Mr. Rogers.
Mr. Rogers: But you know, sometimes life is a lot like that... something that may be very easy for one person... might be very difficult for another. Have you found this to be true? Thor: Uh, yes... yes I have. Mr. Rogers: Do you know why that is? I think that it's because everyone is special and unique in different ways. Just because someone has difficulty lifting your hammer doesn't mean they aren't talented in other ways. In fact, I suspect those individuals can probably do things that you and I would never dream of. Thor: That is true. You are very wise, Sir Rogers, I am humbled by your counsel. Mr. Rogers: And I am so glad you decided to visit today.
How about when Rogers was trying to get his TV show concept going as a local program, it was people in Canada at the CBC who recognised that he had something special to offer? As such, Rogers was invited to that TV network and thus gave him a national venue to develop a preliminary production, MisteRogers, that would be the groundwork for his later American show that would make him a legend. Eventually, Rogers' visa expired and he decided to return to the United States to make his mark on generations there. However, Rogers did not truly abandon the friends who gave him his big time start, for his understudy, Ernie Coombs, was inspired by Rogers to stay in Canada to become the beloved host of a landmark TV series of his own that would touch whole generations of Canadians as well, Mr. Dressup.
This twitter thread in which Anthony Brenzican describes a chance encounter with Mr. Rogers, right when he needed it.
His famous "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'" In a time when news of environmental crisis, wars, disease, famine, or humans just being awful to each other seems to pop up every day, it's tempting to just give up on humanity and the world. Mister Rogers, despite being long dead, tells us that while there are great perils in the world, there will always be people to fight back and all is not lost.
, him accepting his Lifetime Award,