> In case you do not know, he passed away today.
>
> He was truely one of my favorite people, so kind and gentle and caring. And he also had a love for good music. His show taught children (and adults I am sure) morality and self-respect, and it also exposed them to wonderful music from classical to jazz.
>
> He will be missed.

I've spent all of my 19 years in Pittsburgh, PA, the same city Mr. Rogers called home. The man was an icon in this city, beloved by anybody who had the capacity to do so. He was a man renowned for his charity work, for his love of children, for all those things we hear about now. But we were blessed because he did all of that *here*, in our city. He's been called a national treasure, and that is certainly true. But he was also a treasure that this city was proud beyond words to call their own.

I spent some time yesterday on the websites that the local news stations run. The story of his passing was leading on all of them. All of them. Ahead of things like the terror alert level being reduced. I saw it was front page news on the national news websites, but it wasn't anywhere near the lead.

On one website, they had set up a discussion board for people to talk about Mr. Rogers. And there was just page after page after page after page of Pittsburghers saying how happy they were to have had him as a part of their childhood. Stories of people seeing him at Giant Eagle (local supermarket chain) and the like. Mr. Rogers was probably more widely watched in this town than Sesame Street was. Which is odd because he came on right afterwards. Or before. I can't rememeber now, but it may have actually been before AND after. I can almost hear the WQED guy saying "Funding for Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood provided in part by Giant Eagle, something else, and viewers like you," right before he came on.

famous IMed me yesterday to talk about an LJ post I had written about him, and in the course of that conversation, I mentioned some of my favorite things about his show. Like trying to guess what color his sweater would be that day, or how it was SO COOL that he had a traffic light in his house. Or how whenever he'd go to some factory to show us how they made crayons or some such, they'd show the camera panning through that little model town. And I wanted one of those little model towns so badly.

Mr. Rogers was a huge part of my early childhood. Being at the age where my entire childhood is finally coming to a complete close and I'm being thrust into the world of adulthood (I maintain that my childhood "officially" ended when I graduated high school), his passing has that added effect of being just one more sign that I'm not a kid anymore. For some who have made that realization years ago, they lost a reminder of their childhood...but this is almost sort of the capstone on my childhood. The man who was one of my favorites to watch on TV when I was little is now gone, much as my childhood is now all but gone.

The Other Matthew