By Joshua Axelrod for Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
This may be blasphemous to Pittsburghers, but Mister Rogers’ first neighborhood was not, in fact, the WQED set of his hit children’s show.
Fred Rogers was born and raised in Latrobe, about 40 miles east of the Steel City. He went to Latrobe High School, attended Latrobe Presbyterian Church, and made lifelong relationships in Latrobe that helped inform the man he became and the philosophies he imparted to children on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
“I think both Latrobe and Pittsburgh were highly influential in who Fred became,” said Dana Winters, director of academic programs at Saint Vincent College’s Fred Rogers Center. “It’s not that one was more important than the other, but they had really key influences based on those two distinctive places.”
