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Joanne Rogers, an completed live performance pianist who celebrated and guarded the legacy of her husband, the beloved youngsters’s TV host Mister Rogers, has died in Pittsburgh. She was 92.
Rogers died Thursday, based on the Fred Rogers Center. No explanation for loss of life was given. The heart known as her “a joyful and tender-hearted spirit, whose heart and wisdom have guided our work in service of Fred’s enduring legacy.”
Joanne and Fred Rogers had been married for greater than 50 years, spanning the launch and finish of the low-key, low-tech “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” which introduced Fred Rogers as one grownup in a busy world who all the time had time to hearken to youngsters. His pull as America’s favourite neighbor by no means appeared to wane earlier than his loss of life in 2003.
“I can’t think of a time when we’ve needed him so much,” Joanne Rogers informed The Associated Press in 2018. “I think his work is just as timely now as it was when it came out, frankly.”
An ordained Presbyterian minister, Fred Rogers produced the pioneering present at Pittsburgh public tv station WQED starting in 1966, going nationwide two years later. He composed his personal songs for the present.
It provided a tender haven for teenagers, in sharp distinction to the louder, extra animated competitors. The last episode of what his widow known as “a comfortable lap” aired in August 2001.
PBS stations across the nation nonetheless air “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and a few will be discovered on the PBS Kids video app. There are DVD collections on Amazon and episodes stream on Amazon Prime.
The metropolis of Pittsburgh, the place the present was produced, tweeted that Joanne Rogers was one in all Pittsburgh’s “greatest neighbors.” It stated the couple “forever changed our city.” Other tributes got here from such assorted followers as tennis star Billie Jean King to designer Kenneth Cole.
Fred Rogers’ impact on well-liked tradition was profound: Eddie Murphy parodied him on “Saturday Night Live” within the Nineteen Eighties and one in all Rogers’ trademark zip-up sweaters hangs within the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. He’s had a class devoted to him on “Jeopardy.”
2018, the fiftieth anniversary of when Rogers first appeared on TV screens, prompted a PBS particular, a brand new postage stamp, the feature-length documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and, a yr later, the Tom Hanks-led biopic “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”
Born Sara Joanne Byrd in 1928, Joanne Rogers met her future husband at Rollins College in Florida. After Fred Rogers’ loss of life, she helped develop the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at St. Vincent College in his hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
“Joanne and Fred were Pennsylvania treasures committed to improving our communities and the lives of our children. We will never forget their legacy of kindness,” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf stated in a press release.
She is survived by two sons, James Byrd Rogers and John Rogers.
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Associated Press reporter Michael Rubinkam contributed to this report from Pennsylvania.
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