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He shows me a sign that he keeps on the table near the door: Freddie, I like you just the way you are. "It was my Grandfather McFeely who said such things as that," he says. "We used to visit him in the country almost every Sunday. He was the kind of person who would say, 'You know, you've made this a special day by being here.'" Above the couch hangs a sign that bears the Greek word for grace; below it, a sign in Hebrew that means "My beloved is mine, and I am his." Near the window, a molted snakeskin dangles from a wooden parrot mobile opposite a framed letter from his good friend, the late Henri Nouwen. A giant crayon leans up against a corner; the book Hello Fish is within arm's reach on the couch; there is a Bible on the end table and a violin case resting against a chair.

Then Mister Rogers starts asking me the questions.

"Do you live right in Chicago?

"How long have you lived there?

"So you've gotten to know some people really well during that time. My, they're blessed to have you."

He asks about my job and my family. "I love to know about people," he says. I tell him how my children (and their mother) grew up watching his show and how my oldest son wrote him a letter and drew him a picture of Daniel Tiger. "How blessed they are to have you for a mother," he says.

I try to regain control of the interview, but do not succeed. Before we can push on, he is opening his wallet to show me pictures.

"Did you know Henri Nouwen? Here he is with Chris de Vinck," he says. He tells me about the book of essays Chris de Vinck is compiling about Henri Nouwen.

"These are Chris de Vinck's children."

There is a picture of a woman whose husband was sucked into coal slag and suffocated; and there is a picture of her two children.

"This is one of my special friends, Yo-Yo Ma, who is a cellist, and his son," he says. "He's a great man.

"This is Jonathan Kozol—he writes about children."

Then there is a picture of Mother Martha and "some of the kids in the Bronx"; a little boy from his church; and another boy with autism who is fixated on hangers.

"That's Chef Brockett," he says.

"Oh, here is Dr. Orr, that's what I was looking for. And Mrs. Orr. She's still living."

In seminary Mister Rogers studied systematic theology with Dr. William S. Orr. "From then on I took everything he offered; it could have been underwater basket weaving.

"He was a great influence on many of our lives. Not just because he was brilliant," he says. "He was the kind of person who would go out on a winter's day for lunch and come back without his overcoat.

"I studied Greek with him and then I studied New Testament with him. Every Sunday, my wife and I used to go to the nursing home to visit him. One Sunday we had just sung 'A Mighty Fortress Is Our God' and I was full of this one verse. I said, 'Dr. Orr, we just sang this hymn and I've got to ask you about part of it.

"'You know where it says—The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him. For, lo, his doom is sure. … one little word will fell him? Dr. Orr, what is that one thing that would wipe out evil?'

"He said, 'Evil simply disintegrates in the presence of forgiveness. When you look with accusing eyes at your neighbor, that is what evil would want, because the more the accuser'—which, of course, is the word Satan in Hebrew—'can spread the accusing spirit, the greater evil spreads.' Dr. Orr said, 'On the other hand, if you can look with the eyes of the Advocate on your neighbor, those are the eyes of Jesus.'

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March 6 2000, Vol. 44, No. 3