When Heaven Scrapes the Pavement

NOTE: This is an expanded version of the post I did yesterday. I didn't think the addendum warranted another post.

The other day, I posted about John Wooden. He is truly one of the most remarkable people of both high character and high fame ever to live.

This being the heart of baseball season, I wanted to post something about baseball tonight, but I don't see that happening right now. Searching high and low, I'm finding nothing that serves me right at this instance. But what I'm never short of is quotes by Fred Rogers. Mister Rogers was also one of the best human beings ever to walk this planet.

Just the other day, I was writing back and forth with a friend of mine from Camp Tecumseh. He had written to tell me what an impact I'd had on his life, which is ironic, because I told him the same thing. We counseled together for a few years, and I asked him if he had ever watched a YouTube video of one of Mr. Rogers' commencement speeches. He said no, but I noticed the next day, he had posted a link on Facebook to a speech of Mr. Rogers' from a college graduation.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Mangesh Hattikudur in the magazine Mental Floss, from May 2007:

According to a TV Guide profile, Fred Rogers drove a plain old Impala for years. One day, however, the car was stolen from the street near the TV station. When Rogers filed a police report, the story was picked up by every newspaper, radio and media outlet around town. Amazingly, within 48 hours the car was left in the exact spot where it was taken from, with an apology on the dashboard. It read, “If we’d known it was yours, we never would have taken it.”

Today is the first day of summer camp at Camp Tecumseh. Here is one of my favorite quotes from Mr. Fred Rogers. I used to share this with my campers during the last night of their Camp T experience during the nightly devotion. I hope you learn something from this, because I certainly did:

"If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person."
— Fred Rogers