The memory-keeper
Everyone knows Mr. Rogers, the cardigan-clad TV host who took generations of children to the neighbourhood of make-believe, helping them learn the things one must in the course of growing up, such as how to tie shoelaces and what it means to die.
But there was also Mrs. Rogers — she relished identifying herself that way — his loyal wife and partner for 50 years and later a memory-keeper for his message of kindness.
Joanne Rogers — born Sara Joanne Byrd in Jacksonville, Fla., on March 9, 1928 and who died Jan. 14 at 92 — was for years largely unknown to the millions of youngsters and former youngsters who grew up watching her husband, Fred, on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, the celebrated show that aired on public television from 1968 to 2001. She assumed her most active role in the neighbourhood long after he had moved on, and well after his death in 2003.
Rogers appeared in Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018), a documentary directed by Morgan Neville. She was thrilled, she said, when actor Tom Hanks was cast to portray her husband in the drama A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) and spent considerable time on the set, making a cameo in the final product. (Actress Maryann Plunkett plays her in the film.)
She objected to depictions of Fred as a saint. “I think he was perfectly human,” she said in a 2019 interview with ABC News. “Or imperfectly human, I should say.”
But, Rogers said in a TEDX Talk in Pittsburgh, “I want to assure everyone he was that person that you knew on television.”