Joanne is one of the primary stewards of Fred’s legacy. In the 16 years since Fred’s 2003 death, they’re the only token of his that she’s kept for herself.
They’re tucked in a tote bag that hangs by her favorite chair, so she can grab one when she wants to feel close to him. She still has most of the letters from their early courtship. Even though she didn’t know him all that well by the time he proposed, that’s what she clung to - the idea that this was a man with a strong moral center. Fred told Joanne about his hopes for the future - about the kind of people he wanted the two of them to become. They kept in touch through the mail, though they weren’t very good writers, Joanne says. When Fred headed to New York after graduation for an apprenticeship at NBC - the first stop on his way to “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” - she stayed in Florida to get her master’s degree in music.
Joanne - she dropped “Sara” early on, deeming it too stuffy - was raised in a Puritan home, and she was repulsed by her schoolmates who talked about “sucking face.” Any kissing she said she and Fred did was “pretty unpracticed.” She recalls being attracted to Fred, but they weren’t particularly physical with each other outside of the sorority and fraternity dances they attended together. It was 1952 and they were in the midst of a long-distance courtship that began at Rollins College in Florida. A letter she lost almost immediately in a flurry of excitement as she rushed to a pay phone to give him her answer: “Yes, yes, yes!”īoth 24, she just 11 days his senior, they were friends but not yet lovers. Fred Rogers proposed to Sara Joanne Byrd in a letter.
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