For many people, the late Fred Rogers represents something of a patron saint of Nantucket. The beloved children’s television host and Madaket summer resident exemplified the neighborly values that the island community still holds dear. Two years ago, the Dreamland sought to cement Mister Rogers’ legacy on Nantucket by erecting an original statue of him sculpted by Seward Johnson that sits outside of the theater. Last month, the Dreamland took its efforts to celebrate the values of Mister Rogers a step further by establishing the Fred Rogers Good Neighbor Award to recognize a Nantucket resident who contributes selflessly to the community. Of the nearly one hundred individuals who were nominated by the community for the award, this year’s inaugural recipient is an island icon in his own right, Dr. Timothy Lepore.

“As the first recipient of the Fred Rogers Good Neighbor Award, I feel quite humbled,” said Lepore. “Mr. Rogers certainly was an innovator and a creator, but he was much more than that.” The same could be said of Lepore who is much more than simply a doctor. His exploits as a marathon-running, antique-gun-collecting, falcon-flying, country-style doctor are immortalized in the pages of Pam Belluck’s critically acclaimed biography Island Practice. “In a world of corporatized health care, where doctors’ time with patients is logged in ‘relative value units,’ Lepore is a never-say-no physician who accepts payment in oatmeal raisin cookies, lets patients bring themselves, or their animals, to his home at all hours, and makes house calls, even to a hermit squatting illegally in swampland whose house is a ‘twigloo’ made of vines,” Belluck wrote for this magazine in 2013.

Dr. Lepore on the sidelines of the Whalers football team where he has served as team doctor for decades—completely free of charge. Photos courtesy of Dr. Timothy Lepore.

As intriguing as Lepore’s folkloric medical reputation might be, it was his many unsung contributions to the community that earned him the Fred Rogers Good Neighbor Award. Perhaps none of these contributions is more notable than his decades of service to the island’s public schools. Lepore has served as the medical advisor to Nantucket High School sports and as the football team’s physician, attending nearly every Whaler football game for years. More than once, he has run out onto the field at a high school sports game to help an injured student or provide assistance to an athletic trainer even though he wasn’t supposed to be working.

But he has lent more to the school system than just his medical expertise. He has also spent many years on the School Committee, well past the point when all of his children had graduated, taking on the roles of chair and vice chair as the situation demanded. Even now, Lepore remains on the committee, doing his part to help the students. Helping kids is just part of who Lepore is. Though it often goes unmentioned in the numerous profiles of his life on Nantucket, Lepore has opened up his home to many troubled children, fostering them and giving them a place to stay.