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Mr. Rogers' Wife, Joanne, Appeared on 'The Tonight Show' and Shared the Power of 143

By Kayla Kunkel June 14, 2018 at 9:37am

Fred Rogers has clearly impacted millions of people through his groundbreaking show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” All of the recent hype around the highly anticipated documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” is a testament to just how much he touched the lives of the children who watched his show.

Not only did he make children feel seen and heard, but he continually set an example of how to treat others with kindness.

He not only lived out these principles on his program but also in his everyday life. He was once “caught on ‘Candid Camera,'” and didn’t even get slightly frustrated.

Fred’s wife, Joanne, recently appeared on the Jimmy Fallon’s show and further confirmed that Mr. Rogers was as wonderful off camera as he was on camera. She was just as warm and charming as her late husband.

She shared that she and Mr. Rogers met while attending college at Rollins College in Florida. She noticed that he was different than most men his age; he was able to share his feelings.

“In his young days, he was lively and full of fun, but he talked about his feelings, and I could talk about my feelings to him and the things that bothered us, the things that we loved,” she said. They were able to build a friendship that became what she said was a solid foundation for their 50 years of marriage.

The documentary, that comes out in select theaters on June 15, 2018, reveals even more of Mr. Roger’s hopes, dreams, and quirks. One of those quirks was his obsession with the number 143.

Mr. Rogers did everything within his power to keep his weight at 143 pounds. He apparently did so by swimming every day.

“He was very pleased when he would get out of swimming, go and get on the scale: 143. 1 was (the letter) I, 4 was L-O-V-E, 3 was Y-O-U. He had enough love to go around,” she said.https://www.westernjournal.com/l/wp-admin/upload.php

She also shared that Mr. Rogers was an ordained minister through the Presbyterian Church, but that his evangelical work looked much different than other minister’s.

She said, “He was ordained as an evangelist to carry on the work that he was doing in television with families and children.” This was something he did gracefully and might even explain why his program was so different than others before it.

Another reason that his show was so revolutionary was that he decided to work only with public television. His first television related job was with NBC, but he only wanted to learn the business. Once he did, he began working with public television for a very specific reason.

Many networks were (and still are) consumer-based and Mr. Rogers did not want the children watching his show caught up in that. “He knew he wanted to work with children and he didn’t want children to grow up to be consumers, to be thought of as consumers,” Joanne said.

Mr. Rogers was definitely one of a kind and the world is a better place because he was in it. We’re still feeling the impact of his revolutionary work and probably will for years to come.

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