`ROMPER ROOM' HOSTESS, 90, REFLECTS ON HER LIFE
Jean Taschioglou of Vacaville, served as the host on the children's TV show in the 1950s and 60s
Like most preschool or elementary school teachers, she brought joy, a love of learning, kindling wonder, and imagination in the lives of her students, some of them in Vacaville in later years.
But to thousands more on television in the 1950s and `60s, in the era of black-andwhite TV sets, Jean Taschioglou of Vacaville was a “Miss Jean” in a regional broadcast of “Romper Room,” in Bangor, Maine, and, later “Miss Nancy” in Great Falls, Montana, leaving the children's show in 1964 when her Air Force officer husband, Byron, was transferred to Travis Air Force Base.
During an interview last week, Taschioglou, who turns 90 on Thursday, looked back on her brief TV career teaching math, spelling, and etiquette — and arguably a kinder citizenry and shared future — to a handful of preschoolers in TV studios and to an unseen audience of many thousands, no doubt also transfixed when she held up the frame of a hand mirror, a show tradition, the “Magic Mirror,” and called out the selected first names of young viewers she could “see” in their homes.
Standing in her Buckeye Street home, neatly dressed, her light hair coiffed in tight curls, her eyes lively and attentive, Taschioglou, a graduate of Boston University, said, “I've always been a teacher.”
As the story goes, in the early 1950s, Baltimore-based Burt Claster Productions prepared for the debut of “Romper Room,” and Claster's teacher wife Nancy was the first “Miss Nancy,” considered the prototype teacher for the children's show that featured a shiny elementary classroom.
At some point in the mid1950s, while the family lived in Bangor, Taschioglou heard about the auditions for “Romper Room” at KABB-TV but needed child care in order to take time for the tryout.
“Before I knew it, I got someone to care for the baby,” she recalled. “There were hundreds of young women auditioning. I'd never been in a TV studio before.”
“It was just a freak acci
dent,” added Taschioglou of landing the job. “I'd never heard of `Romper Room.' I thought, `I'm going to go for it.' “
She was selected and trained and became the station's “Miss Jean,” enjoying the part-time work that allowed her to be away from her home for a couple of hours each weekday.
By son Byron Peters' account, she was “well-liked and loved by the children,” but the needs of the Air Force forced the family to move to Great Falls. She was quickly hired at KFBBTV, where she was a “Miss Nancy” on that regional broadcast of the children's educational program.
Each “Romper Room” was formatted to open with a greeting from the hostess and the Pledge of Allegiance. Like other hostesses in other regions, Taschioglou and the children — usually four, she said — would then set out for the next 45 minutes or so playing games, doing exercises, singing songs, telling stories, and learning moral lessons, all of which were generally accompanied by background music.
“Every couple of weeks, they sent lesson plans,” she recalled. “It was just like teaching school.”
She said the show also had a mascot, Mr. Do-Bee, an oversized bumblebee who came to teach good behavior, with his “Do-bee (kind) (friendly) …,” suggestions. There was also a “Mr. Don't Bee (mean) (selfish) …” admonitions to show the kids what they should not do.
The hostess also would serve milk and cookies to the children, but, before eating, they would recite the “Romper Room” prayer: “God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food. Amen.”
Clips from YouTube show that, toward the end of each broadcast, each hostess would hold up the “Magic Mirror” and recite the rhyme, “Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic Mirror, tell me today, did all my friends have fun at play?”
Son Byron, who, at one point, also appeared on the show, recalled in an email that all the children “loved this fantasy way of closing the show. I personally loved it because so many of my peers at school wanted to hear their names said on TV.”
He also recalled a particularly harrowing, prank-gone-wrong experience.
“One morning in the middle of a live broadcast the station received a phone call and a woman stated that Miss Nancy's home was on fire,” Peters wrote in the email. “Immediately a floor director held up a sign asking if anyone had the current location of her two kids. While the music and games continued the fire engines were racing to her house only to find no flames or smoke anywhere. Miss Nancy never left the children on that show and although she was concerned the show went on as scheduled. It was later revealed that the caller had also auditioned for the role of Miss Nancy. Her unhinged action was taken very seriously and luckily the children on the set were none the wiser.”
In 1996, the Montana Broadcasting Society honored Taschioglou as a “Female Television Pioneer.” She was grateful they remembered her work on the show some 32 years earlier. She began her “Romper Room” experience at age of 23 and was 27 when she held up the “Magic Mirror” for the last time.
“It was really fun,” said Taschioglou. “I was a school teacher to begin with. I had them singing or marching (to music).”
Besides her stints on “Romper Room,” a franchised and syndicated show that started in 1953 and continued to 1994, she served as a substitute teacher in Vacaville Unified in the 1970s. In the following decade, Taschioglou was assigned to Padan Elementary, where she volunteered, for 10 years, to help children struggling with English as a second language.
Later, she and her son Byron formed a folk group, The Gathering, while taking lessons through Vacaville Adult Education. She also was a two-time president of the Vacaville Art League in the mid-to-late 1960s.
Taschioglou, perhaps always a “Romper Room” “Miss Jean” or “Miss Nancy,” said she will celebrate her ninth decade on Earth during a cruise to Alaska.