WMU Alum & Paw Paw Native, Loretta Long Was in The Original Sesame Street Cast

There she is, Loretta Long from Paw Paw, Michigan and from Western Michigan University. Long along side (left to right:) Matt Robinson (Gordon), Will Lee (Mr. Hooper) and Bob McGrath (Bob) and, of course, Big Bird, were among the original hosts of Sesame Street in 1969.

Born Loretta Mae Moore in Paw Paw, she went to WMU in the 1950's, and briefly taught in Detroit in the early1960's before moving to New York where she taught while auditioning for jobs. and according to iMDB.com, she auditioned for Sesame Street by singing "I'm a little tea pot". Moore married and became Loretta Long, and later earned a Doctorate in Education from the University of Massachusetts.

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Long started in 1968 hosting a public television show "Soul", then joined Sesame Street the following year playing Susan Robinson for almost half a century, and virtually all the items on the iMDB resume are Sesame Street related.

I'm A Little Teapot

Here's Long talking about getting cast on Sesame Street and telling the "I'm a little teapot" story.

(FoundationLegends via YouTube)

A feature in MichiganAdvance.com mentions that in the mid 1990's, a survey said 95% percent of all children has seen Sesame Street by the time they were three years old and three years ago the estimates were that some 86 million children have grown up watching Long and the rest of her cast mates over the years on the show. The first one debuted November 10, 1969, fifty two years ago this week.