After any tragedy or disaster, it is a virtual guarantee that someone will quote Fred Rogers.

The man behind “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was known for his lifelong efforts to help children make sense out of what happened around them, from how crayons were made to having big feelings. Among those efforts was advice he gave to help kids cope with upsetting events.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping,’ ” he wrote in 1983, though he paraphrased this story of his Latrobe childhood on other occasions.

The advice was partially for children, to know someone would be there in times of need. But it was given to adults, as an unspoken urge to be there in those moments.

On May 1, 1969, Rogers was the helper.

He sat before the U.S. Senate to speak on behalf of public television as then-President Richard Nixon was looking to make broad cuts to federal funding. Rogers wasn’t there lobbying for his show. He was there in defense of children’s television, but he specifically called out for attention to this small niche that could only really be provided by public television.

It was early in his career. “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” had only been a nationally run program for a year. He was not yet a household name, unless you had a child the right age to be captivated by a soothing voice and a few puppets.

But Rogers’ earnest and honest words more than did their job. Not only did they almost singlehandedly save the funding —something the subcommittee chair Sen. John Pastore openly noted in the hearing —but just a year later, Nixon named Rogers the chair of the White House Conference on Children and Youth.

On Thursday, 56 years to the day from that testimony, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to “cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.” In addition to pulling funds, the order fired allegations at the radio and television broadcasters, using words like “bias” and “radical woke propaganda.”

Oh, that the home of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” could be so denigrated.

Neither broadcast agency receives all its funding from the government. For PBS, it’s about 15%. For NPR, it’s just 1%. Other funding comes from things like grants from nonprofit organizations and sponsorships by corporations, and the well-known “support from viewers like you,” pledged during donation drives.

But whether it was $1 or $1 billion, there is something else that the federal money represents. It is an investment in an education that is what Rogers called it during his testimony: “an expression of care.” It is a way to support our collective neighborhoods.

Rogers died in 2003. He is not here to visit Congress. He cannot, in one calm but passionate conversation, change the direction of a budget and the wants of a president.

Instead, we must do what Rogers encouraged. The children will look for the helpers. It is on all of us to be that calm, steady, determined voice of support for public broadcasting.