Josie Carey was there on Day 1. The host of WQED's long-running "Children's Corner" recalled the station's current president, George Miles, referring to her as "WQED's first star," and it's a fitting moniker.
Carey actually began working at the station in October 1953, six months before it began broadcasting. "I did everything that had to be done, as we all did," Carey recalled, praising the guiding vision of the station's first general manager, Dorothy Daniel. "If it hadn't been for her, there would not have been a WQED."
Though Daniel may not be long-remembered by Pittsburghers, her name was immortalized for millions of children as that of Fred Rogers' puppet, Daniel Striped Tiger. Rogers worked, mostly behind the scenes, with Carey on "Children's Corner" for seven years and brought Daniel with him when he later created "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."
Even before WQED went on the air, Carey remembered going door-to-door soliciting $2 at each stop. In exchange, donors received a program guide for the nascent station, which went on air with educational programs featuring such topics as remedial reading, history, painting and how to write in shorthand.
On "The Children's Corner," Carey taught French and, later, station management suggested that she and Rogers run a film teaching German. "It broke every time," Carey said. "I learned 100 ways to introduce it until they gave me the signal it was going to work."
Because everything was live, improvisation was key. "Somebody who was supposed to do 10 minutes would do eight, and so Daniel and I would talk to each other [to fill the remaining time]. The puppets grew that way. They became personalities because of these conversations. Everything was live. You couldn't go to anything else. You had to just stand there and smile."
She remembers one dress she wore with a detachable collar. The more chaotic the broadcast and the more excited Carey got, the more the collar would move. It became known as "the traveling collar."
"Kids would write in and say, 'I hope you wear it again,' " she said, noting that her mother made all her dresses.
"We were sure we were doing something important," Carey said of the start-up station. "We enjoyed every minute of it. I was secretary to the station manager; Fred was going to be program developer. Between us we had about 87 programs we were trying to get Mrs. Daniel to consider, but the only one she wanted us to do was 'The Children's Corner.' "
Guests on "Children's Corner" included Johnny Carson, before he became host of NBC's "The Tonight Show," actress Shirley Jones, pianist Van Cliburn and "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles Schulz.
Carey wrote lyrics for 68 songs in the course of seven years of "Children's Corner"; Rogers wrote the music. "If we had a topic that we wanted to pursue and no song we could find, we would sit down and write one," she said. "He would make me very angry because I'd labor over my lyrics and he would sit at the piano and what took me four hours, he would do in four minutes."
Their first collaboration was the "Children's Corner" theme song, "Why Hi, Don't I Know You?" "It was a fantastic partnership," Carey said of writing lyrics for Rogers to put to music. "That's where we discovered that what he lacked, I had, and what I lacked, he had."
She said Rogers learned to write music for her vocal range. "I used to say I got by on four good notes and a smile," Carey said. "Fred used to have to write music to my voice. If he went too high or too low, I couldn't sing it, but I've pushed those four good notes a long way, I can tell you that." rest of story
