On May 1 1969, when I was 4, Fred Rogers appeared before a US Senate subcommittee to fight for the half of the $20,000,000 in funding that President Richard Nixon wanted cut from PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that year.
Watch him below as he charms the pants off of the subcommittee’s chairman Sen. John Pastore.
http://youtu.be/yXEuEUQIP3Q
More than 40 years later, listening to him speak so wholeheartedly and eloquently about how much he cares about children and how important he believed his program was to them is something of an aha! moment in realizing that way back then I was one of those children for whom he was fighting.