Local ties to creating and saving Sesame Street
PBS’s “Sesame Street” might not exist today if it were not for two Arizonans. It was created in part by Joan Ganz Cooney, who grew up in Phoenix. In 1972 a bill funding the continuation of Sesame Street was vetoed by then President Richard Nixon. Ganz Cooney turned to an old family friend from Phoenix for help, the late Senator Barry Goldwater, who helped restore that funding. We’ll get details from Sherman Dorn, an historian of education at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.
