"Xapis," the Greek word for "grace," hangs in wood on the wall of Fred McFeely Rogers' office.
The word is fitting for the man known as Mister Rogers to most American preschoolers, for he believes spiritual grace can be transmitted through television and his shy demeanor hides a determined inner core.At 61, Rogers is a quiet success in a loud medium. His Emmy-winning "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood," seen in about 7 million households each week, is the longest-running children's show on national television.
His career in children's television started 35 years ago with the debut of "The Children's Corner," a five-day-a-week live program on Pittsburgh's then-brand-new educational channel, WQED. Rogers produced the program, did the music and worked the puppets, many of whom - like Daniel S. Tiger and King Friday XIII - would later reappear in the "Neighborhood." But he was seldom seen, a background figure in a show hosted by star Josie Carey.
For all the similarities, "The Children's Corner" was definitely not the "Neighborhood." "Corner" was spontaneous and slightly chaotic, a far cry from the heavily formatted "Neighborhood," where every move and every word is carefully analyzed for its effect on the average 4-year-old viewer.
"Corner" was born, Rogers says, "by happenstance." He had been working for NBC in New York as assistant producer on "The Voice of Firestone" and floor manager on "Your Hit Parade." When WQED-TV was founded in 1953, he saw a chance to come home.
He was the station's 26-year-old program manager and Carey, 24, was "somebody's secretary." No one else at the station wanted to do a children's program, so the two of them did.
He worked the puppets and she worked the crowd. They wrote the show and its music together, including "Tomorrow," which would stay with Rogers when he moved to the "Neighborhood."
"Corner" won the 1955 Sylvania Award for the nation's best local children's program.
By the fifth year, however, "Corner" was changed to a half-hour format. Carey spent her mornings doing "Josie's Storyland" at KDKA-TV and Rogers spent his at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary studying to be a Presbyterian minister.
With the collaborators moving in two different directions - and apparently embracing divergent philosophies and programming techniques - the show ended on a somewhat unneighborly note in 1961, with some hurt feelings.
Ordained in 1963, Rogers planned to do a TV program for the United Presbyterian Church. The day before he graduated, he learned the church didn't have enough money for the program.
"The day after graduation, I had a call from Fred Rainsbury, who was head of children's programming for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., saying, `Fred, I'd like you to do a 15-minute program across the border up here. Would you do it?' Well, I said, `Fred, do you have any idea how good your timing is?"'
With his wife, Joanne Byrd, and his sons John and James, Rogers moved to Toronto. Only when he got there did he discover Rainsbury wanted him to be the on-screen host of this new CBC show, dubbed "Misterogers Neighborhood."
"I never expected to be on the screen, ever. I expected that I could work with children one-to-one, but I don't think that I ever expected to be on the television."
To be honest, it wasn't exactly Rogers' TV premiere. He had given dance lessons in a mask and tuxedo on "Corner" as Prince Charming. The Prince even had his own daily show for a while.
He did "Misterogers" for a year in Canada, but decided "it would be better to raise the children in this country. I had accepted a job at the United Oakland Ministry to be minister to children, and that was right across the street from the old QED."
"Neighborhood" had a four-week run in 1964, with Carey as Emily Brontosaurus and Rogers as host. In 1966, Rogers and WQED added 15-minute introductions to the 100 Canadian shows and the current version of the show was born.
"I guess," Rogers says, "I was always meant to do (the show)."
Who is Fred Rogers? He's not "Mister Rogers," but the similarities are astonishing. He talks a little faster than he does on television, though not much.
There's a free-association quality to a conversation with Rogers as he stops to analyze what he just said or to turn the question on the questioner.
A thumbnail biographer would say Rogers eats sensibly, loves to read and spends up to an hour a day - home or away - in a swimming pool. He's a grandfather now and the husband of a concert pianist.
Don Brockett, who has worked with Rogers for years, first as Mr. Anybody, then as Chef Brockett, has an answer to the "Who is Fred Rogers?" query.
"Mister Rogers is Mister Rogers," Brockett says, "(but) Fred Rogers is Mister Rogers, Henrietta Pussycat, Daniel Tiger, Lady Elaine Fairchild, X the Owl, and most certainly King Friday the XIII (puppet voices done by Rogers).
"He is all those people. I never fail to see those people in the real Fred that I know, and in every one of those people I see a part of the real Fred that I know."
For Rogers, the answer is simpler. "I'm Fred Rogers, and I hope that I give that real person on the air . . . I don't walk into my own home and sing, `It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood,' but when I talk to that camera, I'm trying my best to be myself."
Rogers has heard the jokes and the parodies and sometimes has laughed himself. He's enjoyed "Mr. Carson's" skits, and Eddie Murphy "couldn't have been nicer to me when I met him."
The jokes annoy him if they're done without affection, but he only becomes truly upset by parodies "that would give people the notion that we weren't really serious about our work with families . . . because you know how much of myself that I've invested in this work through the years."
There are now about 600 episodes of the "Neighborhood" on tape.
Rogers once said he would quit when he reached 780 (he does 15 new shows a year), but now he says he doesn't "think of any numbers anymore."
"My work is very important to me, otherwise I don't think I would have stayed with it all this time. People used to say to me, `Well, what's next?' And I'd say, `This is next.' "
Rogers takes his mission seriously. And, he says, that's why children continue to respond after all these years.
"After you've listened to children the way that I've tried to listen all my life, and respond in as creative a way as I know how to deal with what their inner urges are at the moment, then I think they get the idea that you care...I think they're looking for somebody who wants to understand them and be their neighbor."
It was the answer to Rogers' prayer, a way to "encompass all of the talents I had been given" - his interests in ministry, psychology, music composition, piano and puppetry.
"The way I can do it is to work with children. All those facets all seemed to come together."
"I have so much to do here. I don't know whether anyone realizes how much goes into the making of what we make here. You know, we're 15 people...At Children's Television Workshop (the producer of 'Sesame Street') they have 400 people."
They also have a massive merchandising empire, a move Rogers has resisted over the years. "There have been chances to have our name and faces on every plastic creation known to man, but we just don't believe in indiscriminate licensing."
Still, now that the show's an institution, you may finally be able to buy your own Daniel hand puppet. Rogers is negotiating with Dakin to do the first "Neighborhood" stuffed animals - King Friday, Queen Sara, Daniel, Lady Elaine, X the Owl and Henrietta Pussycat.
Everything Rogers does with the "Neighborhood" has a planned effect. For years he has discussed his scripts with two advisers, either psychiatrist Albert Corrado or child psychologist Margaret McFarland. McFarland died last year, but Rogers still has the tapes of their meetings, hundreds of them, in a file in his office.
He doesn't expect the program to change the world, but it's enough "even if one person believes what we say on the 'Neighborhood'...that there's only one person in the whole world just like you, and people can like you exactly the way you are."