Happy 85th birthday, Mr. Rogers! To commemorate this event, I thought I’d post an exercise I did in my RW1 class in Columbia J-School during the fall of 2009. We had to write his obituary as if he had passed the day before, and this ended up being one of my better written pieces that semester (and I produced it in less than 2 hours). It helped that I was clearly inspired. After all, I grew up watching Mr. Rogers and felt a special kinship with him because he was also from Pittsburgh. So long neighbor! We loved you just the way you were!
Written in October 2009:
The iconic cardigan sweaters will stay in the closet. The comfy indoor shoes will gather dust on the floor. No one will come through the front door to sing about what a beautiful day it is in the neighborhood before taking the audience on an educational and self-affirming trip through the Neighborhood of Make Believe. For almost four decades, audiences welcomed Mister Rogers into their living rooms where his positive messages and songs touched the lives of countless children. That soft, yet powerful voice, is no more.
(more…)