Joanne Rogers, Mister Rogers’s Mrs., Is Dead at 92
Joanne Rogers, who as the gregarious wife of Fred Rogers, the influential creator and host of “Mister Rogers' Neighborhood,” spread his message of kindness after his death in 2003, died on Thursday at her home in Pittsburgh. She was 92.
Her death was announced by Fred Rogers Productions, which produces children’s programming for public television.
“So much a part of me was Fred,” Mrs. Rogers said in a TEDx Talk in 2018. “One of the things he talked about was making goodness attractive, and I think that’s something that we can try to do, and it’s quite an assignment.”
Mrs. Rogers was as comfortable being Fred Rogers’s wife as she was performing for nearly 40 years in a piano-playing duo with her college friend Jeannine Morrison. Mr. Rogers was also a trained pianist, but he was not considered as adept as his wife.
Over 50 years of marriage, Mrs. Rogers was a supportive force behind her husband, who, starting in 1968, welcomed children into his television neighborhood, where he gently sought to lift their self-esteem and taught them to cope with real-world situations like divorce, racism, death and war. The program ended production in 2001.
SAUCE: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/arts/television/joanne-rogers-dead.html