Don't Bee demonstrated what children should not do. Do-Bee, an over-size bumblebee, taught the children proper deportment, while Mr. Miss Sherri served milk and cookies to the children on the show, with a simple prayer: "God is great, God is good. The live show started each morning with the Pledge of Allegiance and featured lessons, songs and games. Sherri Chessen had been known to thousands of children since 1958 as Miss Sherri, the host of the Arizona edition of the nationally syndicated children’s television show "Romper Room.” More than five decades later, her decision can still stir controversy. Few issues are more divisive, debated at dinner tables, in the highest levels of government, and in a brutal presidential campaign where a candidate talks about punishing women who end a pregnancy.īut it wasn't just the decision of a troubled mother-to-be from Scottsdale. In July of that year, she made a life-altering decision that would generate international headlines, send her halfway around the world and turn her into a symbol in a fight that had barely begun. Sherri was 30 then, married, already the mother of four and pregnant with her fifth child when she learned that a tranquilizer she had taken for morning sickness had been linked to severe birth defects. The scene took her back to the summer of 1962.
After a moment, she pushed rewind and then play.
Sherri picked up the remote and pressed the pause button, sobs shaking her whole body. She spoke cheerfully but couldn't look the mother in the face. A woman had just given birth to a baby, a daughter, with deformed arms and legs. On TV was the British program “Call the Midwife,” a drama that follows the lives of a group of midwives working in the poverty-stricken East End of London. “She just saw the good in everything and trusted everyone, even when she probably shouldn’t have.It was a Sunday night, and Sherri Chessen was watching television in her condominium in an ocean-side retirement community in La Jolla, California. “She brought sunshine wherever she went,” Del Rosario said. Sometimes people who saw her on the show sought her out at home. Del Rosario made the decision because of a string of break-ins and her mother’s trusting personality. King moved from her home in Hacienda Heights to the Oakmont of Chino Hills senior community in 2015. Officials later decided to offer the program without accepting a $30,000 grant from China. In 2010, she fought against the controversial implementation of a Confucius Classroom, sponsored by the Chinese government, at a middle school in Hacienda La Puente Unified School District. King was a lifelong advocate for education. She took the job after school officials told her “if you think you can do better, come and do it,” when she complained about one of her daughters’ classes. “In her words, that was the end of the rainbow, where the dream was,” her daughter said.Īfter “Romper Room,” she went deeper into education, teaching as part of a regional occupation program that helped high school students learn technical skills. She appeared in advertisements and talk shows in Texas and Kansas, until she was asked to come to Hollywood to host “Romper Room.” But when an actress couldn’t nail the lines, she stepped in and impressed the producers, Del Rosario said. Originally from Oklahoma, King wrote commercials before she ever appeared in one. “She set the bar high for all ‘Romper Room’ teachers, and like all of her much younger students, I always wanted her to be proud of me.” “She was just so important in the lives of so many little kids,” Serrano said. While studying education in college, Serrano looked at King as a role model. It was the first time the two hosts sat together, Serrano said. “That was my little way of encouraging her and respecting her. “She really is the one that most people remember with her beautiful red hair and her lady-like demeanor and her sweet voice,” Serrano said. She presented it to King on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Socorro Serrano, who hosted “Romper Room” as “Miss Soco” from 1975 to 1990, dug out her Magic Mirror after learning of the theft.
In 2003, a mugger snatched King’s bags, including one containing her Magic Mirror. Magic Mirror, tell me today, did all my friends have fun at play?” the host asked. “Romper, bomper, stomper, boo, tell me, tell me, tell me do.