American television personality, musician, puppeteer, writer, producer, and Presbyterian minister, known under the name Mister Rogers. He was the creator, showrunner and host of the preschool television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, which ran from 1968 to 2001.
Rogers earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Rollins College in 1951. He began his television career in 1951 at NBC in New York. He returned to Pittsburgh in 1953 to work for children’s programming at NET (later PBS) television station WQED. After graduating from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, he became a Presbyterian minister in 1963 and attended the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Child Development, where he began his 30-year long collaboration with child psychologist Margaret McFarland. He also helped develop the children’s shows The Children’s Corner (1955) and Misterogers (1963). In 1968 he created Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, a show critically acclaimed for focusing on children’s emotional and physical concerns, such as death, sibling rivalry, school enrollment, and divorce.
The end of an era was marked on 31 August 2001 when Rogers greeted youngsters for the last time on his PBS TV show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He’d had a run of 34 years and the show’s producers hoped to segue into reruns with little or no disruption for the 3- to 6-year-olds who considered the cardigan-wearing Rogers as family.
Rogers and his wife, concert pianist Joanne Byrd, had two grown sons and vacationed at their home in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Originally trained and ordained as a minister, he said, “The general message of the Neighborhood is that the truth is best. If we can share ourselves with our kids in ways that aren’t frightening to them, that’s the greatest gift we can give anyone — the gift of an honest self.” His gentleness and decency gave several generations of children more than entertainment but nourishment for their growing characters.
Rogers died of stomach cancer on the morning of 27 February 2003 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at age 74. His work in children’s television has been widely lauded, and he received over 40 honorary degrees and several awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002 and a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 1997. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999.
American actor Tom Hanks, who is Rogers’ sixth cousin, portrays him in the 2019 film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.
Link to Wikipedia biography