Club history: Mr. Rogers in the NPC neighborhood

When I saw the new film, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” I remembered the day Fred Rogers appeared at the National Press Club on April 6, 1990. I brought my five-year-old daughter, Carolyn. 

Mr. Rogers was at the Club to promote children’s television and highlight his testimony to a congressional committee about the value of an alternative to the violence on television in finding ways to resolve conflict.

He may not have expected so many children to be in the audience, but appearing before children certainly never rattled him. He said in his soothing voice that the first part of the program was for the adults. Then he would talk to the children.

“Children should never see a news program alone,” he said. “Young children should never witness that kind of horrendous stuff without the presence of an adult. If we are going to give children scary things on television, then there should be an adult right there to interpret it.”

About 37 minutes into the program, Mr. Rogers pulled King Friday, one of his premier puppets, out from under the dais and instructed the audience – adults and children alike – to greet him with “How do you do, King Friday. How do you do, King Friday.” Next came the shy Daniel Tiger, followed by X the Owl.

Mr. Rogers related a story about how on a recent trip to the Soviet Union, a group of Americans and Soviets were meeting very stiffly. Then the puppets came out. Russians love puppets, he said, and they all wanted to touch Daniel Tiger. When X the Owl came out, his beak had been broken in transit. One of the Russians took the owl and disappeared.  When he came back, the beak was perfectly mended.

For a last question, Club Vice President Kathryn Kahler said George H.W. Bush has been compared to a combination of Fred Rogers and John Wayne. She turned to Rogers and said, “Who do you think you are a combination of?”

Mr. Rogers said he had been warned about this question and had given it a lot of thought. Still, he paused several seconds pondering it.

“I think it would be Albert Schweitzer and Arsenio Hall.”

You can watch Mr. Rogers at the Club here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?11917-1/childrens-television

Tom Hanks plays Mr. Rogers in this film, and he, too, had his day in front of a Club audience. Hanks had played astronaut Jim Lovell in the film “Apollo 13,” and on July 26, 1995, he and Lovell appeared to talk about the film and the astronaut’s experience in the near-fatal mission.

As a boy, Hanks said, he followed all of the Apollo missions. “I knew the crews, I knew the flights, and I knew the mission goals as they were stated,” he said. “In fact, I was very much involved in the drama that was Apollo 13.”

Asked what role he would like to play next, Hanks said most American actors have four roles they would like to play – “a cowboy, an Army man, a baseball player, and, in fact, an astronaut.”

Mr. Rogers was not on that list.

You can watch Tom Hanks and Jim Lovell here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?66353-1/apollo-13

This is another in a series provided by Club historian Gil Klein.  Dig down anywhere in the Club’s 111-year history, and you will find some kind of significant event in the history of the world, the nation, Washington, journalism and the Club itself. These stories will be published as a book, “Tales from the National Press Club,” due out April 27, 2020.