By now, you’ve likely heard that Bob McGrath, who played Bob Johnson on Sesame Street beginning in 1969, died Sunday at age 90. I haven’t needed to know how to get (“how to get…”) to Sesame Street in a long time. But as a Gen Xer, part of the very first generation raised on Sesame Street, I find it wrenchingly sad to contemplate a world without Bob in it.
When the show first aired on Nov. 10, 1969, I was almost 2, so while I don’t exactly remember watching the first season, I was glued to the set shortly after that. Gordon (then played by Matt Robinson, dad of actress Holly Robinson Peete) was my first childhood crush. My only slightly younger-than-me niece, Erin, chose Bob for hers. I seem to remember we carefully picked different Sesame Streeters so there would be no jealousy under our roof.
I chose to study Spanish in high school because Sesame Street introduced me to its basic vocabulary. I took an autograph book to my grocery store because Mr. Hooper was such a part of Sesame life that it surely seemed like my own grocer would be just as friendly. (P.S., I chickened out and didn’t ask for any signatures.)
My street was nothing like Sesame Street, an urban, diverse New York street teeming with life and activity. I lived in a quiet, second-ring lakeside suburb in Minnesota, where the only diversity was German-Irish versus Swedish-Norwegian. You needed a car to get anywhere in my neighborhood. There was no strolling to Mr. Hooper’s store, or Luis’ Fix-It Shop. Sesame Street, and its kind, friendly humans, zany Muppets, and entertaining-but-educational sketches showing subways and skyscrapers, might as well have been the moon. But thanks to cast members like Bob, it was a moon we loved to visit.
Bob himself may not have been my crush, but Erin did well to pick him for hers. He was a trained musician, and his voice carried a musical gentleness that you hear in certain people — Fred Rogers, Pete Seeger, John Denver — that innately makes you trust them. Gentle though he might have been, Bob had a big job on his shoulders. Bob and the other Sesame Streeters taught us letters and numbers and told Cookie Monster to eat an apple every now and again. When Will Lee, the actor who played Mr. Hooper, died in 1982, Bob helped teach a grieving young audience how to deal with loss.
I actually had to look up the facts about his character — Bob Johnson was supposed to be a music teacher who lived with his cat, in an apartment above Hooper’s store. He didn’t have an on-site business, like Luis, and wasn’t part of a couple, like Gordon and Susan.
But maybe his character didn’t need to be distinct, because real-life Bob was his character. Like Fred Rogers, you just instantly believed he was the person he played, good and kind and trustworthy, a safe place for kids who might not have that at home.
Generation X gets forgotten a lot, still, but if there was ever a group of kids who could’ve used a father figure like Bob, we were it. I’ve written two books about Gen X memories, and I know that, for many of my peers, growing up was fraught with troubles. Divorce, drug use, domestic violence — not everyone had a sunny Brady Bunch upbringing. Escaping to a place like Sesame Street was priceless.
I knew nothing about Bob’s offstage life, ever. (Turned out, as you might expect, he’d been happily married to wife Ann since 1958 and had five children and numerous grandkids.) It was a relief, somehow, to read the memories shared by his friends and castmates after his death and discover no one had anything bad to say about him. He had a Facebook page and there, too, he was always smiling, celebrating friends’ birthdays, sharing holiday snapshots.
Emilio Delgado, who played Luis on Sesame Street, died in March. Bob remembered him then in a touching Facebook post. The words he spoke about his late friend could’ve been said about Bob himself.
“As saddened as we are to lose our dear friend Emilio,” Bob wrote, “thinking about his love of life and all the joy he has brought into the lives of so many adults and children, the best way I can think of honoring him is to remember what he believed. Life is a gift to be enjoyed together.”
If life is a gift, it’s also enhanced along the way by those who are strong enough to guide the younger generations. Thank you, Bob, and all the kind adults of Sesame Street, for being there when we needed you, sweeping the clouds away.
