When Mr. Hooper Died On "Sesame Street"
When “Sesame Street” actor Will Lee died in 1982, the show’s creative team decided his character, Mr. Hooper, would die too. They used the opportunity to help the show’s preschool audience learn to understand and cope with death. After the people of Sesame Street tell Big Bird that Mr. Hooper died, Big Bird mentions wanting to show a drawing he made to Mr. Hooper “when he gets back.” Big Bird’s adult friends gently explain to him that there’s no coming back from death, that it’s forever. Big Bird grows upset, and demands to know the answer to life’s greatest mystery: “Why does it have to be this way?” The emotional adults helplessly offer the dreadful, inadequate, yet only true reply anyone has ever had for that unanswerable question: “Because. Just because.”