Back in 2003, during the final months of my high school career, I clipped a picture from the newspaper and placed it under the smoked glass that sits atop my Dad’s Infinity Column II speakers. This wasn’t a time that I really had anything straight in my life, but something in me wanted to save that piece of history. The picture is an AP photo of Fred Rogers, arms resting on model trolley tracks, on the set of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

The secret that too few people know, though, is that Mister Rogers off the set wasn’t like Mister Rogers on the set — he was better. A Presbyterian minister who not only worked extensively with children, but also did master’s level work on child development, you’ll find him more complex than his on-screen persona. A favorite anecdote of mine: in 1990, his car was stolen — when the thieves realized whose car it was, they returned it to his home. Biographical details of this sort, however, can easily be found by reading the Wikipedia entry about Mister Rogers. Recently, I began to wonder what he was really like, things one wouldn’t find through Googling or even by watching episodes from 33 years of his eponymous show.

Let me try to explain my ideas about a true hero. A philosophy 101 course inevitably deals with platonic idealism:

For example, a particular tree, with a branch or two missing, possibly alive, possibly dead, and with the initials of two lovers carved into its bark, is distinct from the abstract form of Tree-ness. A Tree is the ideal that each of us holds that allows us to identify the imperfect reflections of trees all around us.

Indeed, a platonic ideal for most everything floats out in the aether of our minds; I’ve been peculiarly preoccupied with one — Hero-ness. Unable to fully articulate this ideal I had, I was always (almost subconsciously) holding folks up to this ideal. Then I read this book, I’m Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers and I realized that I already discovered my hero, clipped his picture, and tucked it safely away in my childhood home.

This past Sunday afternoon was the comfortable sort of cloudy, rainy, chill day that anticipates coming snow and holidays. So, in a thoughtful mood, I stepped out briefly to see if this I’m Proud of You book by Tim Madigan, was at the Borders in Woodbury. I brought it home and began reading. I read it straight through in one sitting (which, I must interject, is by no means a testament to any speed-reading ability of mine — it is a succinct work).

I haven’t cried that much in a while. The book possesses a propulsive tension between strained relationships, death, deeply troubled people and, in a splendid counterbalance, the unfathomable well of care and attention paid to the author by Mister Rogers. It is a character portrait made whole by it simultaneously being a memoir.

We need not delve into bygone eras or even distant countries to find heroes — one of them is right on television talking to children every day, his incredible generosity and kindness continuing on even in his absence.

Thank you, Mister Rogers.

• Mister Rogers
• Heroes
• Television

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