Joanne Rogers, widow of Mister Rogers, dies at 92

Joanne Rogers, a concert duo pianist and wife of the late Fred Rogers, died at her Squirrel Hill home Thursday at age 92 surrounded by family and friends.

Known for a boisterous laugh, Joanne Rogers became the face of her husband’s legacy after his death in 2003, appearing on news programs and late-night talk shows in support of books and documentaries about Mister Rogers and his PBS program, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

“She wasn’t going for the spotlight but she was very happy to respond to the national and worldwide interest in what Fred was offering to the world,” said Hedda Sharapan, a consultant to Fred Rogers Productions and a senior fellow at the Fred Rogers Center in Latrobe. “She gave the world another sense of who Fred was through her humor and her humorous stories about him.”

In announcing Joanne Rogers’ passing, Fred Rogers Productions did not provide a cause of death. It was not covid-19-related.

“Joanne was a brilliant and accomplished musician, a wonderful advocate for the arts, and a dear friend to everyone in our organization,” the FRP statement said. “We extend our heartfelt condolences to Joanne’s family and the thousands of people who had the privilege of knowing and loving her.”

Born Sara Joanne Byrd in Jacksonville, Fla., she met Fred Rogers when he transferred to Florida’s Rollins College, where they studied and bonded over a shared love of music.

“[Music] is so important in the relationship that I look at him and say, ‘What do people do who don’t have music?’ ” she said in 2002. “It’s that important.”

While she earned a master’s of music from Florida State University, Fred moved to New York to work in the burgeoning television industry.

“We were sort of looked on as a couple in that way, but it wasn’t really until I was in graduate school and he was in New York — I think he probably missed me,” Rogers said. “We wrote fairly regularly anyway, and he got in touch with me by letter and asked me to marry him.”

She was surprised, but offered an immediate “yes” in a call from a pay phone. They married in 1952 and would go on to raise two sons, James and John.

Joanne Rogers provided voices for some of the characters on Fred’s first TV program, Pittsburgh’s “The Children’s Corner,” a precursor to “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” where she made a few appearances as Mrs. Rogers. (Queen Sara in The Neighborhood of Make-Believe was named after Joanne’s given first name, which she dropped while growing up because she found it stuffy.)

A concert duo-pianist who performed with longtime Georgia-based friend Jeannine Morrison, Rogers taught at the preparatory school of music at Chatham College in the 1950s. In the early 1970s, she taught for four years at Carlow College.

David Newell, who played “Speedy Delivery” mailman Mr. McFeely on the “Neighborhood” and did public relations for the program, recalled a memory that offered a glimpse at Joanne Rogers’ artifice-free persona. After seeing a movie at The Oaks Theater in Oakmont with Joanne and his wife, Nan, he remembered Joanne’s reaction when he went to pick up a free movie poster the theater was giving out.

“Now, David, what are you gonna do with that?” Joanne Rogers said, laughing and pleasing Nan, who didn’t want her husband bringing home another poster.

“I always said with Fred, ‘What you see is what you get,’ and that was true of Joanne, too, but in a much different way,” Newell said. “Fred would have said, ‘How long have you been collecting posters?’ Joanne was more direct but with such a great sense of humor.”

The Rev. Mary Louise McCullough, pastor of the Rogers’ church, Sixth Presbyterian in Squirrel Hill, from 2005 to 2012, recalled when she first met Joanne in her home.

“I was so nervous because I was going to see Fred’s widow,” McCullough said. “The first thing she did was put me at ease. She said, ‘Oh, listen, you’re not gonna see me at church a whole lot,’ and she had this Southern accent that I loved. ‘Church was Fred’s thing, but that’s OK. We’re gonna get to know each other,’ and she laughed with this big personality. And sure enough, she’d show up once a year for Easter.”

Following Fred’s death, Joanne became more involved with his company, then called Family Communications, now Fred Rogers Productions. She became chair of the company and was involved in hiring Kevin Morrison as chief operating officer. He would help develop and launch “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” which has been a PBS Kids hit since its 2012 premiere.

“Her role was really one of inspiration,” said Bill Isler, former CEO and now president emeritus of Fred Rogers Productions, noting Joanne Rogers was involved in interviewing both Morrison and current FRP CEO Paul Siefken before they were hired.

Isler also recalls Joanne Rogers’ more mischievous side. When Fred was to receive a statewide award in the 1980s or ‘90s, he accompanied Fred and Joanne to the event. After 30 or more instances of Fred introducing his wife and his company’s CEO to political figures, Isler quipped, “I’m her son by her first marriage.”

“And we’re so proud of all he has done,” Joanne Rogers added, not missing a beat. (“You two will be going home by yourselves,” Fred teased afterwards.)

Joanne went on her first media tour in 2003 after Fred’s death to promote the release of “The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember,” a collection of his speeches and other writing. It was followed by more books that she was surprised to be asked to promote.

“It frightened me,” she said in 2005. “I’ve never felt I was very articulate, but I was raised a Southern gal, and Southern gals are always taught to be able to carry on conversations and not let there be too many pauses.”

In more recent years, a renewed interest in Fred Rogers — through the 2018 50th anniversary of PBS’s “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” the documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and Tom Hanks’ 2019 movie, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” in which he played Fred Rogers — put the spotlight on Joanne Rogers even more intently.

“I was so happy for Joanne with the release of Morgan Neville’s documentary and the Marielle Heller film for her to have a chance to be discovered by America for what a wonderful and joyful person that she was,” said FRP’s Siefken. “When else do you have the opportunity to have your expectations met so beautifully? Joanne was just as wonderful as you would expect her to be.”

Margy Whitmer, producer of the “Neighborhood,” was seated next to Joanne Rogers in a Downtown Pittsburgh Chinese restaurant for filming a scene where the camera caught glimpses of those from Fred Rogers’ orbit, including Joanne, Whitmer, Sharapan, Isler and Newell.

“They’d say action and we were supposed to be quiet and she would just keep talking about what she was talking about,” Whitmer recalled. “Later we were put in this room next door and we were just chatting away and people came to see her and she was kind of holding court, and it was just wonderful. Every time I think of her, I can hear her laughing. Even if you didn’t feel like laughing, you started laughing because she was laughing. It was contagious.”

In 2019 Joanne Rogers received an honorary degree from Duquesne University.

“Joanne Rogers was a sparkling light in Pittsburgh,” said Duquesne President Ken Gormley in a statement upon news of her death. “When we presented her with an honorary degree during Duquesne University’s 2019 commencement, she beamed and told the graduating students, ‘You are special,’ invoking one of Fred’s favorite songs. Joanne Rogers was more than special. She will be a permanent part of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and, for those of us who knew and loved her, she will always remain in our hearts.”

And while Joanne Rogers was certainly more boisterous than her famously soft-spoken husband, they shared an appreciation for the best in humanity.

“People have been able to make me feel comfortable by just being so kind, and there’s just been a constant feeling of respect that I’ve felt,” she said in 2005 as she was becoming a more public figure and encountering fans of her late husband. “You meet other people who have their own stories; it’s wonderful to hear them. It’s a gift to be trusted with someone’s story, I think.”