Did Sesame Street attempt in any way to help kids deal with the events of September 11th, 2001?
If so, clips would be appreciated.
They didn’t discuss it directly, as far as I remember, but they did through allegory.
Mr. Hooper’s store had a grease fire and Elmo (inside at the time) is terrified by the firefighters who come in and put out the blaze. This allowed them to deal with the issue of fear, as well as what firefighters do.
Mr. Hooper’s store was rebuilt just the way it was, except that now he has a red canopy instead of a green one.
Mr. Hooper’s store?!
Forget Sept. 11[sup]th[/sup], how did they help kids deal with zombies?!
It’s called Mr. Hooper’s store even though someone else runs it now.
Big Bird also has a framed drawing of Mr. Hooper hanging up in his bird nest, which I think is very sweet.
(It’s still called Hooper’s Store, even though Alan is in charge of it now and Gina works there a lot.)
Here’s a wikipedia article on it, which also has the grease fire/Sept 11th story.
The drawing comes from the famous “Death of Mr. Hooper” storyline of 1983- Big Bird drew pictures of all of his friends, but was curious as to the whereabouts of Mr. Hooper. Big Bird was informed that Mr. Hooper had died, and learned about death. The drawing of Mr. Hooper was done by Big Bird puppeteer Carroll Spinney, who is also a talented cartoonist.
Looper.
In other disaster news, apparently Sesame Street did have an episode dealing with a Hurricane Katrina-like disaster. Big Bird’s nest was destroyed, and everyone pitches in, helps him rebuild, and gives him a place to stay in the meantime.
This was aired sometime before Sept. 11th and abruptly reran the week of Sept. 11th to help kids deal with the news. I remember my nephew (who was two years old at the time) telling me about Big Bird’s nest being wrecked “like the building downtown” and my sister explaining about the episodes.
Okay, did you do that on purpose? The time stamp of the OP is 9:11am!
That’s a rather Time-Zone-centric viewpoint. 
Neat that you pointed it out, thanks! I would never have noticed, since for me it says 6:11.
8:11 where I am (and where the Chicago Reader is).
OK, that is the saddest thing ever. Cripes!
A bizarre yet funny parody of this touching moment showed up online in 2004. The folks who came up with it put it best: “To this day, [Mr. Hooper’s death is] one of the best ways I have yet to see the issue of death handled on children’s television…and we had to go & ruin it.”
Hoopeh! Hoopeh!
I remember that episode. I was about four or five years old at the time, and as cliche as it sounds, I think that’s the first time I really understood what was meant by “death” as being final.
I was going to ask how Mister Rogers dealt with it, but that was after his retirement.
Nitpick: Big first found out about Hooper’s death simply by showing up at the store and finding him not there. The other cast members walked him through it (“He is gone. And we will miss him.”), but the drawings were in a later episode, when they had to tell him, “No, don’t you remember? He’s gone.” The producers felt a followup was necessary, because Big, like kids his mental age and younger, tends to forget things after a while.