We are called to be Peacemakers

 

An excerpt from Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

Fred Rogers was concerned. Ellen Goodman, a syndicated columnist for the
Boston Globe, had just criticized one of his public service announcements
for preschool children during the Persian Gulf War. “Mr. Rogers decided to
make a special public service announcement to anxious children that ‘you’ll
always have someone to love you, no matter what,’ ” she’d written. “But the
dateline of his report is the Kingdom of Make Believe.”

The words stung, but rather than simply stewing, Rogers took to the pen,
as he often did, writing Goodman a heartfelt response. “Having been an
appreciative reader of your excellent work for years, I was concerned when I
read the column in which you ‘clicked’ our public service announcement for
preschool children in this horrendous world crisis,” he wrote.

Rogers did not launch at Goodman, but he did feel the need to explain his
actions, gently but firmly, so she might better understand. “When PBS asked
if I would speak about conflict to families of preschoolers, my first reaction
was not to do anything about the war in this medium which seemed to broadcast
nonstop the ‘Scud v. Patriot Show,’ ” he offered. “But then I started to
hear more and more about young children’s fears, and I prayed for the inspiration
to do something helpful.”

Rogers added that the result of his prayers, the PSAs Goodman criticized,
echoed his earlier work in another time of crisis. After the assassinations of
President Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy, he had
written and taped a program in which he asked families to include their
children in the grieving process. “Our country was in mass mourning,” he
explained. “It was then that I realized more fully how speaking the truth
about feelings—even on television—could be exceedingly curative.”
So in spite of his initial reticence, Rogers accepted the invitation from PBS
by doing what he did best—speaking directly to children and their families
about their hopes and fears. He summed it up for Goodman:

Even though I don’t make policy in this country, I do feel an obligation
to give the best I know how to families with young children when policies
(of government and television) are affecting those families so directly.
That’s why I agreed to do anything at all. I lament for the world (not the
Neighborhood of Make-Believe!) because the abuses of war breed abusers
who grow up to sow the seeds of future wars. Anything I can do to bring
a modicum of comfort to a little one, I will do. (How I would love for my
2½-year-old grandson to be able to grow up in a world which refuses to
abuse its children!) Even though I felt helpless in some ways (because of
the onset of the war), I was grateful (as I imagine you must be at times) to
have an avenue in which to express the truth as I felt it for the children I’ve
always tried to serve.

But it wasn’t just gratitude that Rogers was feeling as he finished his letter.
“You can imagine my grief,” he wrote in a postscript, “when I think of the
many 20+-year-old men and women on ‘active duty’ in this war who grew
during their earliest years with our ‘Neighborhood’ program. How I long for
them to be able to come back here and live the rest of their lives in peace.”

There is a documentary coming out in June on Misters Rogers.