Dr. François S. Clemmons - Officer Clemmons

OFFICER CLEMMONS

Some names have been changed to protect identities.

Copyright 2020 by Franois S. Clemmons

All rights reserved

Kind permission to reprint photographs is courtesy of the author and The Fred Rogers Foundation

ISBN: 978-1-948226-70-7

Jacket design by Nicole Caputo
Book design by Wah-Ming Chang

Catapult titles are distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West
Phone: 866-400-5351

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019947925

Printed in the United States of America

13579108642

To Fred and Joanne Rogers

And to my beloved Lawanna Boswell,
whose light shone bright in my life

CONTENTS

OFFICER CLEMMONS

D EAR FRED,

My guardian angels, spirit guides, ancestors, literary agent, and many friends and acquaintances have urged me to write this book for over twenty years. Ive been amazed by the unabashed curiosity that is readily shown by folksthose close to me, as well as outright strangers. Im most frequently asked, Was he really like that? meaning your television persona. Usually my initial response is simply Yes!

Early on, I fully grasped your enormous popularity, and at the same time, I learned about your unusual and immense patience. Its so amazing to me that even during dinner as wed travel across the country, Id watch you permit complete strangers to greet you, interrupt meals, and tell you their life stories. You would stop eating and patiently wait to sign your name and a gentle message that they might request. You never got angry or annoyed.

The questions from your fans rarely stop with Was he really like that? So, I simply put on the patience, like I saw you wear so often, and prepare to listen.

What was it like to work with him? they continue. Is he that nice? Does he ever get angry? Was he a Christian? Did he go to church and preach? Was he gay? Its mostly the men or fathers who ask that last question, and usually in private.

Was he really a Navy SEAL? Was he married? Did he have children? How long did you work with him? Where was the show filmed? Where did he live? Sometimes they want to know, What was his wife like? Howd you meet him? Did you make a lot of money? Some of these questions I can answer easily. Others are more complicated.

When children used to ask me about you, they wanted to know less about the man himself and all about the Neighborhood of Make-Believe: the trolley, the different puppets, the piano player. Some children asked if the Neighborhood was real, but my all-time favorite question from children was, How did you get out of the television?

Questions from your many fans partially motivated me to write this book, but the other reason is its uniqueness. Before I started writing, I sat down with twelve or so biographies, prayer books, quotes by you, and songbooks. I googled you extensively and looked at other publications by or about you. I scrutinized everything so I could compare them to what I was attempting to do. I also began the long process of going through my personal archives. I reread our old letters, sifted through photos, and found newspaper clippings and memorabilia I had collected over the years. I wanted to spark a deep impression of the man I wanted to summon in this book. As often as possible, I spent time speaking with numerous educators and academics who had studied your program, either with their students or with their own children. In some cases, with their grandchildren, nieces, and nephews.

After all of this, I concluded that there was one thing in particular that stood out: none of the other publications were authored by a black, gay, ordained person of the theater who had worked intimately with you for over thirty years! Because of that, I felt that I could bring a singularly unique perspective to those years that no one else has. My perspective would offer far more than a one-time encounter at the local restaurant, or even hours spent in a research library. Our relationship was sustained, intense, and elbow-to-elbow. For me, you fulfilled the role of mentor, fan, and surrogate father.

But something was missing. As I wrote about you and your impact on me, I realized that I needed to start from the beginningfrom my beginning. Not only how music brought us together, but how it saved me at a tender age. I wish I had been able to tell you some of the stories in this memoir before your death.

Fred, you were a real person to me. Its important to me that others know that. Lord knows you had your successes and failures like anybody else. But you taught through example not to live down in the valley of disappointment. That we all must learn to rise up and start over again. You practiced it and you helped me to practice it, particularly regarding my biological family. You taught me forgiveness and love. For you, forgiveness and love were action verbs, and it was imperative to live their true meaning one day at a time. Because of you, I was able to seek reconciliation with my father, my stepfather, and my mothereven after their deaths.

The most beautiful gift you gave me, however, was to help me accept that there are no accidents and that our unusual friendship was meant to be. You believed in life after death and that when the time came, wed reunite in some place. I believe this too.

Until we meet again,

Franois

W HEN I WAS BORN IN 1945, THE SANDERS-Scarborough clan had lived for several generations in the sprawling, blanched little town of Blackwater, Mississippi, just north of Meridian, in the backwater region near the Okatibbee Reservoir and the Alabama border. If you werent a cotton farmer, a sharecropper, or a smithy who worked for white folks, there wasnt much for you to do there. Some folks got along raising chickens and guinea fowl; some did light farming but could not prosper. Each year they fell further in debt to the landowner, Ol Mastuh Sanders.

Twice in our clans memory, the floods had come in late spring, and no one had been able to plant in time for a summer crop. The seed money was wasted. But most folks stayed on because they didnt have anyplace else to go. It seemed better to be around your own folksto scratch out a living in the tired earththan to move to some strange place where folks called you mister and missus and didnt know your nickname, or your granddaddys name, or how your uncle Jeb had lost one finger in the smithy on Mastuh Sanderss homestead, or even who to call for a county fair game of baseball. New folks wouldnt know nothin at all about you. That was no way to live, so folks stayed on, hard as it was.

To my great-grandmama, this is what seemed important and what made her call this place home. She was also tired. Laura Mae Sanders Pinman had raised thirteen children of her own and found herself surrounded by grandchildren and great-grandchildren, including my older brother Willie Jr., me, and my twin sisters Betty and Barbara. She raised the children when their mamas couldnt do it. And the children just kept coming. She would cook. She would clean. She would wash and pray. She worked and didnt slow down for old memories to catch her.

The Old Homestead on Mastuh Sanderss land had been falling apart for as long as she could remember. Every shutter was hanging down or gone. The paint she helped apply when she was a young girl had never been refreshed; it was barely visible. If she could ever get the front door of the sagging porch to close, it might help to keep the marsh rats from invading the kitchen on hot summer nights. She was always mindful not to leave food out where they could get it; and she felt constant dread that those rats might crawl into the bedrooms of one of her grandchildrenher gransand bite one of her darlings. When it rained, every bucket and pot in the house was used to catch water from the leaky roof.