Joanne Rogers Was More Than Mrs. Rogers, She Was the Epitome of Kindness
Joanne Rogers, the musician, arts advocate, and widow of Fred Rogers, has died at 92 years old. A statement posted on the official Instagram account of the Fred Rogers Production Company confirmed her passing, saying, "Joanne was a brilliant and accomplished musician, a wonderful advocate for the arts, and a dear friend to everyone in our organization. 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, Florida in 1928, Rogers took up piano at age five; years of training led her to study piano performance at Rollins College, where she met Fred Rogers and her future collaborator, Jeanine Morrison. Fred and Joanne were married in 1952 and remained married until 2003. They had two sons, John Rogers and Jim Rogers.
In the early 1970s, Rogers and Morrison began traveling as a performing duo, playing at churches, universities, and events around the nation. In the more than three decades they performed together, Morrison estimated that they played over 300 concerts. Together they recorded two albums: “Duo - Piano Favorites” and “A Virtuoso Duo - Piano Showcase.” Late in her life, Rogers stopped playing piano due to arthritis, but she remained a devoted patron of musicians, traveling often to see friends like Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma perform. Her son, Jim Rogers, has said that, when his mother stood at the stage door of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the musicians who filed out after a performance would greet her warmly.
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When Fred Rogers died in 2003, Joanne worked to preserve his legacy at Fred Rogers Productions, a nonprofit devoted to creating quality media for children. She also helped to develop the Fred Rogers Center Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at St. Vincent College in his hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. In a Facebook post, the Fred Rogers Center described her as “a joyful and tender-hearted spirit”; they went on to call her “a trusted anchor whose heart and wisdom have guided our work in service of Fred’s enduring legacy.”
Rogers was consulted closely on the 2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? When A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood filmed in Pittsburgh, she visited the set almost every day and grew close to Tom Hanks, who portrayed her late husband. The production team kept a folding chair on set for her, and she even made a cameo in the film as a restaurant patron.
Tom Junod, the writer who profiled Fred Rogers for Esquire in 1998, in a story that would later be adapted into A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, wrote on Twitter, “There was no one else like her, except maybe her husband Fred.” He went on describe his friendship with the Rogerses as one of the “great gifts” of his life.
“She was truly delightful, in both her capacity for delight and to be delighted, and nobody, not even Fred, was as good at calling out of the blue at the precise moment you needed to hear from her, with the sustenance of surprise,” Junod wrote. “She was a friend whom I loved and love still. And for the rest of my life I will both miss and draw strength from the fact that she loved me, and thought to tell me so every time we spoke. God bless Mister and Mrs. Rogers, and may the both of them rest in peace.”
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