Fred Rogers’ Lifetime Achievement Award Acceptance Speech from 1997 Has Been Circulating on Twitter Recently

We can probably all agree that 2020 has been an unusual year at best and a nightmare year at worst. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, you can probably also agree that it’s always nice to have some good news.

Sometimes it’s helpful to go back in time to find good news. We’re not talking about time travel; although, if someone wants to get in a time machine and try to fix 2020, we don’t stop them.

Thanks to YouTube, we have recently found a video that is almost guaranteed to make you smile and/or cry happy tears. The video is of Fred Rogers back in 1997. Chances are that you or your kids grew up watching “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” and today, our kids watch “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” which is based on characters from Mister Rogers’ show.

Rogers had a huge impact on generations of children. He gave them confidence, and he helped explain many difficult situations in terms that children can understand. He made a big world that sometimes felt scary feel a lot safer and more relatable. Oh how we wish Rogers were here to explain 2020 to our children.

While we can’t go back in time and talk to Fred Rogers, we can still hear what he has to say. In 1997, he received a lifetime achievement award during the broadcast of the Daytime Emmy Awards, and his speech is exactly what we need to hear.

Unlike some acceptance speeches that are full of long lists of people to thank, Mister Rogers took a different approach to his speech. Watch the video below to hear what he had to say.

Who did you think about during Fred Rogers’ 10 seconds of silence in this video? We thought about Fred Rogers. This video makes us nostalgic for our childhood and makes us want to rewatch “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” the movie about Fred Rogers’ life with Rogers played by Tom Hanks.