Neighborhood mourns Mr. Rogers 

Stomach cancer claims children's TV father figure

Goodbye, neighbor.

For 30 years, Fred Rogers — known to millions of children simply as "Mister Rogers" — built a television neighborhood that was closed to no one.

It was a community of never-ending childhood and ceaseless acceptance that was always just big enough for one more person.

Today, the neighborhood mourns.

Rogers, the soft-spoken Presbyterian minister who made generations of young audiences his secular congregation, died Thursday after a short battle with stomach cancer. He was 74.

Like teens compelled to make fun of our parents, those of us who grew out of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" found a certain satisfaction in poking fun at him.

But not today, not for any grown-up child who truly appreciated a father figure who would put on some comfortable shoes and actually take the time to sit down and talk to you.

Latchkey kids. Kids from the projects. Kids whose soccer moms were too busy to sit down and explain that the bathtub drain won't suck you down.

Always, it was about you, the child, who was OK just the way you were.

It's a simple — some might say simplistic — notion, but it's one that makes admirers refer to "the neighborhood" in a collective sense.

"He was a good influence on us," says Jeanette Rucker, 40, of Nicholtown. She recalls first seeing Mister Rogers when she was 6.

"He was a very nice guy," she said. "It was his smile that made you smile."

And so many other things.

The trolley to the "Neighborhood of Make-Believe" always seemed to go so much further than it really did.

The delivery man would come by to dispense something so basic but yet so interesting, because, on that particular day, we were going to learn how that particular thing really worked.

Even as adults, many of us still think of Mister Rogers taking off his cardigan sweater at the precise moment when we trade our work clothes for a T-shirt.

He didn't always get the shoes tied exactly as his song ("It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood&quot ended with a comforting "Hi, neighbor," but it was always exciting to see if he could.

"Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," produced at Pittsburgh's WQED, near Rogers' hometown, made its debut on public television in 1968.

His original last episode aired in August 2001. He came out of retirement in 2002 to do public-service announcements to help console children after 9/11.

Rogers wasn't the first of his kind, but he was the face of the children's television genre along with "Sesame Street" for nearly 20 years.

His show reached its peak of popularity in the mid-1980s. Then the onset of children's programming outside the sphere of PBS — channels such as today's Playhouse Disney, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon — contributed to Mr. Rogers' decline.

His greatness radiated, in his greetings and his goodbyes. When it was time to go, the heart of a child hurt a little.

We had to return to our real neighborhoods, which might or might not be such comfortable places.

Now we say goodbye for good.

It hurts, more than just a little.