Why did you decide to write a book about Romper Room? I have two daughters and as I watched children’s television shows with them, I thought back to my own childhood. I found a letter my mother had saved that I had written to the Romper Room teacher I used to watch. I was too old to be on the show but wanted to let her know that I was a “good Do-Bee.” I originally thought that the show was only on in my hometown but found out it was actually almost everywhere. As a journalist used to sharing information that wasn’t previously common knowledge, I thought there might be a book in there.
Why do you think Romper Room has been largely overlooked by television historians? Romper Room stands out for the sheer number of women who served as television teachers but because there was not one single person doing the show the research is difficult. It’s much easier to focus on other children’s programs that relied on a solitary figure such as Mister Rogers or Captain Kangaroo.
Your book includes more than 100 teachers. How did you locate so many of them? The Internet and particularly newspaper databases were how I tracked them down. Some were easier to find than others, as they listed being a Romper Room on a resume that was posted online. For some, I had to jump from finding out that “Miss So-and-so” was the teacher on one station but didn’t know her last name. In many instances, the name used wasn’t even their real name. But I was able to find them by searching old newspapers, where in some cases a local paper might have published news that referenced the parents of a Romper Room teacher, so then I was able to narrow down my search.
Were they eager to talk, or did it take convincing? Most were interested in speaking with me. There were only a few that didn’t want to be interviewed, for reasons of their own.
How long did this project take from start to finish? When I started researching the book, my oldest daughter was young enough to enjoy videotapes I had found of the show. She received her Ph.D. this year, so that should give you some idea. Parenthood was my priority, so I worked on the book at intervals over the course of about 20 years. If you compressed all that time to how long I spent actively working on it, that was probably about five years.
Were there any teachers you desperately wanted to interview but couldn't? Obviously, Nancy Claster would have been ideal to interview but she died before I started this project. She trained many of the Romper Room teachers as the program spread around the country. I would have liked to have interviewed Miss Sharon, a California woman who was the first Black Romper Room teacher in the United States, but I never got a response when I wrote to her.
What's the biggest misconception people have about the program? People remember the shows they watched when they were children but often assume that every show aired nationally, which was the case with Captain Kangaroo and Sesame Street. But there were many programs that were aired only in one city. Romper Room was different in that it was franchised from coast to coast – and country to country – and people think that the Romper Room they watched with Miss Sue or whoever was only in their town.
How different were the locally produced versions? Each teacher received a week’s script from Romper Room headquarters, and by script it’s really an outline of what activities to do, what books to read and things like that. The big difference between shows in one city or another was often the length of the program. It might be 30 minutes in one town, 45 minutes in another or even an hour someplace else. That really depended upon how successful the advertising salesmen were at lining up sponsors. Another big difference was that the teachers in larger markets were able to take advantage of being in big cities. They might have an animal brought in from the zoo, for example, instead of just having to show a film about animals.
How much freedom did local teachers have? The teachers were supposed to follow the format, but sometimes they strayed. One teacher told me she preferred to sing her own songs or read her own stories, which the folks at HQ didn’t like. A teacher in Nebraska told me that sometimes the lessons were meant more for a cosmopolitan audience. When HQ said do a lesson about safety in an elevator, that didn’t make sense where she was because elevators were what was used to store grain. But unless someone from the home office was visiting to check in on how things were going – which happened every so often – they didn’t see how much a teacher might be deviating from what was expected.
What happened behind the cameras that audiences never knew? One of my favorite behind-the-scenes stories involves a teacher whose legs were splashed with green paint just before the show was to start. The glass jar holding the paint broke. Someone from the crew had to run and wash her shoes and grab something to clean off her legs. She was starting the show and the crew member was under her desk, putting squishy wet shoes on her feet and trying to wipe her legs off.
Did the teachers really try to include as many children's names as possible? Some teachers were methodical about collecting as many names as possible, from letters usually. Others were more casual, calling out the names of their own children or whoever they happened to think of that day. If you had a common name like Mike or Susie, you might have heard your name called out quite often. If your name was less common, like Wayne or Sunshine, you might never hear it.
Was there an interview that made you laugh out loud? Romper Room teachers were always women, but there were a couple of times when a man had to step in front of the camera. One teacher was sick at home but still had to watch the show to report on what commercials aired. She was expecting to see an old tape but instead her cameraman was doing the show as Uncle Chuck. Unfortunately, that was the day someone from HQ was in town to check in on how well the station was handling the program.
Was there one that made you emotional? I always got a little emotional when a teacher I was interviewing on the phone would say “I see Wayne …” like she was seeing me in her Magic Mirror.
Which story has stayed with you the most? There is one about a boy in Oklahoma who the teacher said was always sleepy on the show. It turns out the boy had leukemia and his parents would take him out late at night to do things like watch trains go by because that’s when they were running. They would do whatever they could to make his time happy. He died. As a parent, that story sticks with me.
Why do you think millions of Americans remember Romper Room so vividly decades later? For many people, Romper Room was their first exposure to being in a classroom. True, it was a classroom on television, but it showed children what the expectations were when they got to school. They learned about sharing, about kindness, about taking turns, and those lessons were ingrained in them.
What impact did these teachers have that perhaps wasn't appreciated at the time? I heard from teachers who years later came across these now-grown youngsters. One was at a restaurant and the waiter recognized her. He said he always wanted to sit in her lap. She let him. Miss MaryAnn in Los Angeles used to carry her Magic Mirror with her so if someone ever recognized her and said, “You never said my name,” she could whip it out and make that right.
Were there stories that simply couldn't fit into the book? Yes. There were a couple of stories that I just couldn’t find a space for because they deviated from the central theme of teachers telling their stories. One was the story of Miss Sherri, the teacher in Phoenix who underwent an abortion before it was legal in the United States. There was such a fallout from what she did – and she had very good reasons to – that she lost her Romper Room job. Miss Sherri is in the book, but I don’t get into what was uniquely her own story.
If you could interview the founders of Romper Room today, what would you ask them? I would love to have interviewed Bert and Nancy Claster, the creators of Romper Room. Bert Clater had an amazing history in producing programs in the early days of television, and many were strictly local that never went beyond Baltimore and didn’t last long. In addition to Romper Room, he also created Bowling for Dollars. If you think about how different those two shows are, it makes me wonder how his mind worked to come up with both. And I would have asked Nancy about all the contributions she made to Romper Room – and there were many – as well as her ability to weed out the teachers who wouldn’t be a good fit.