Author Tim Madigan Shares His Latest
I’m Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers
On UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, September 14, at 9:30 PM

It has been said that a person is lucky if, at the end of his life, he can count his true friends on the fingers of one hand. I’m Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers is the story of two men who formed just such a friendship following author and journalist Tim Madigan’s interview, and subsequent personal visits, with the beloved public television icon, Fred Rogers.

In an all-new episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Friday, September 14, at 9:30 PM, Madigan shares his memories of the man behind Mister Roger’s Neighborhood: an ordained minister, loving husband, father, grandfather, and devoted friend.

“One of the things I say in the book, is that I think Fred Rogers is one of our civilization’s great human beings,” says Madigan. “The thing that made [Fred Rogers] so great, in addition to his television show for children, was his ability to be wholly present for life and the people in his life.”

As an award-winning newspaper journalist Tim Madigan, who, admittedly, was cynical about meeting the children’s television icon, explains the tranformative experience of meeting Mr. Rogers for the first time.

It happened for me in the first hour of having met him…whether he was with you for five minutes or five days…he wanted to know the truth of your life,” says Madigan. “And the way he would extract that from you was from this singular attention and the absence of his own ego, and from this came an extraordinary compassion.”

Tim Madigan is also the author of two critically acclaimed books, See No Evil: Blind Devotion and Bloodshed in David Koresh’s Holy War and The Burning: Massacre Destruction and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. He lives in Arlington, Texas.

Don’t miss DG Martin’s all-new interview with Tim Madigan on North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, September 14, at 9:30 PM, with an encore episode airing Sunday, September 16, at 5 PM, only on UNC-TV!

During the 20-week, 10th anniversary season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests also include: J. Peder Zane (The Top Ten), Gov. Michael Easley (Look Out, College, Here I Come!), Michele Bowen (Holy Ghost Corner), Neal Thompson (Driving With the Devil), Joseph Bathanti (Coventry), Joanna Catherine Scott (The Road From Chapel Hill), James Dodson (Beautiful Madness), Dan Heath (Made To Stick), Margaret Maron (Hard Row), James Peacock (Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World), Melton McLaurin (The Marines of Montford Point), Kathryn Stripling Byer (Coming to Rest), David Guy (Jake Fades),  Georgann Eubanks (Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains), Zelda Lockhart (Cold Running Creek), Mike Lassiter (Our Vanishing Americana: A North Carolina Portrait), Joe and Terry Graedon (Best Choices from the People’s Pharmacy), Fred Hobson (Off the Rim), and William Powell (Encyclopedia of North Carolina).

For additional information about series guests and airdates, plus links to the Bookwatch blog and online book club, please visit: www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh’s independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV’s ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV’s other original productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.