Personal Life
Rogers was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, 40 miles (65 km) southeast of Pittsburgh, to James and Nancy Rogers; he had one sister, Elaine. Early in life he spent much of his free time with his maternal grandfather, Fred McFeely, who had an interest in music. He would often sing along as his mother would play the piano and he himself began playing at five.
Rogers graduated from Latrobe High School (1946). He studied at Dartmouth College (1946–48), then transferred to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, where he earned a B.A. in Music Composition in 1951.
At Rollins, he met Sara Joanne Byrd, an Oakland, Florida native; they married on June 9, 1952. They had two sons, James (b. 1959) and John (b. 1961). In 1963 Rogers graduated from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church.
Rogers had an apartment in New York City and a summer home on Nantucket island in Massachusetts. Rogers was red-green color blind, swam every morning, was a vegetarian, and neither smoked nor drank. Despite recurring rumors, he never served in the military.
Read more about this topic: Fred Rogers
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Persecution was at least a sign of personal interest. Tolerance is composed of nine parts of apathy to one of brotherly love.”
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925)
“I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)