Tim Madigan
Tim wrote his first book in 1968 when he was eleven years old. Every week in the autumn of that year, he scribbled down his account of the latest University of Minnesota football game in a notebook. Sales were modest.
But a love of books, words and writing never left released him, leading from his small-town Minnesota upbringing to a career writing newspaper stories and eventually books that were more formally published and found slightly larger audiences.
After college at the University of North Dakota, Tim worked as a sportswriter at a small paper in that state. Then came the cop beat in Odessa, Texas, and feature writing at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. By the mid-1990s, Tim had become one of the most decorated newspaper reporters in recent Texas history (three times named the state’s top reporter), while writing about everything from sick children, to serial killers, cowboy poets, to his own experiences as a husband and father.
His first book, See No Evil: Blind Devotion and Bloodshed in David Koresh’s Holy War was published in 1993, followed eight years later by The Burning: Massacre, Destruction and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. In its review, the New York Times called The Burning, published by St. Martins in New York, “A powerful book, a harrowing case study made all the more so by Madigan’s skillful, clear-eyed telling of it.”
Tim’s 2006 book, I’m Proud of You: My Friendship With Fred Rogers, (Gotham/Penguin) reveals his life-altering friendship with Fred Rogers, which began in 1995 when he profiled the children’s icon for the Star-Telegram. In 2012, Tim published a second edition of I’m Proud of You under his own imprint, Ubuntu Books. The book continues to sell steadily, and inspire readers around the world. Tim also tells the story of his friendship with Mister Rogers in lectures around the country.
Fred Rogers was one of the first readers of Tim’s first novel, Every Common Sight, which was published by Ubuntu in February. It is the story of Wendell Smith, a hero of the Battle of the Bulge who came home to Texas with horrible memories of the battlefield, debilitating emotional trauma, and a secret, the one thing about the war he could not confide to the love of his life. The beautiful young woman Claire had a secret of her own. After a chance meeting, the two developed an unusual friendship of haunted survivors. But would the bond heal them, or destroy them both? The book has resonated deeply with early readers.
When not writing books or newspaper stories, Tim enjoys spending time with his wife, Catherine, being a dad, playing the guitar, coaching and playing ice hockey, and backpacking in the Canadian Rockies.
“But the Esquire passage I found most poignant and revealing was this one: Mister Rogers' visit to a teenage boy severely afflicted with cerebral palsy and terrible anger. One of the boys' few consolations in life, Junod wrote, was watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood. 'At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. He was so nervous, in fact, that when Mister Rogers did visit, he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him. Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. He said, 'I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?' On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said: I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?' And now the boy didn't know how to respond. He was thunderstruck... because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know how to do it, he said he would, he said he'd try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean that God likes him, too.As for Mister Rogers himself... he doesn't look at the story the same way the boy did or I did. In fact, when Mister Rogers first told me the story, I complimented him on being smart - for knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himself - and Mister Rogers responded by looking at me first with puzzlement and then with surprise. 'Oh heavens no, Tom! I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.”
“life isn't about what you've done, but what you can do:-)--Fred Rogers to Tim”
“The older I get the more I feel this is true, “There’s a loving mystery at the heart of the universe, just yearning to be expressed.” Mr. Rogers/Quoted in I AM SO PROUD OF YOU”