The Two Freds

[Commentary] I've just begun a Senior Fellowship with the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media at Saint Vincent College. For someone in my field, merely having my name in the same sentence as Mister Rogers is a heady, humbling experience. I'm too old to have grown up with him as a "television friend," but young enough that his work was seminal to my career choice.

Meeting Fred left an indelible impression. My first time, I was working at PBS. I'd heard he was visiting the children's programing department, and angled to be there when his meeting ended (funny how many others did the same!). It took only a brief exchange to know there was no "character" or artifice to Fred: he was Mister Rogers. I left with the oddest feeling (that others tell me they've also experienced) that it would have felt perfectly natural to confess my hopes and anxieties to this man I'd just met. Our other memorable encounter brought me to every public speaker's greatest nightmare: in an already high-pressure setting, I followed an iconic -- the iconic -- voice of my field, who had just brought the audience to a reverential hush and left them emotionally spent.