[Editor’s note: This is the second part of a biweekly series that will run this year chronicling significant events in the university’s history.]

In the fall of 1954, freshman Jim Henson entered the university’s senior-level puppetry class, intently focused on sanding the bald head of one of his many creations.

Like every other day, fellow students bustled noisily around the room, but Henson’s eyes never flinched. His mind was solely devoted to his puppet until he would pause, admire his work and smile modestly.

It was at this university where the art and enthusiasm of Jim Henson’s career began, a calling that would bring joy to children and adults alike across the world with shows such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.

“Jim always planned to change the world,” said former puppetry classmate Jane Nebel. Henson and Nebel met in the puppetry classroom, worked together as puppeteers and married five years later.

Sunday marked what would have been Henson’s 70th birthday. The Maryland alumnus died in 1990, leaving behind a legacy as one of the world’s most successful innovators and entertainers.

On Friday, the university gathered to honor Henson’s memory and recognize his place in the university’s – and pop culture’s – history, with Nebel and two of their children, former university and high school classmates and teachers, Muppet co-workers and hundreds of students and alumni, several of whom were carrying their own puppets.

As audience members were handed plastic eyeballs to attach to their fingers for make-shift hand puppets, Nebel gave the crowd a quick lesson on puppet lip-synching and led a communal “Happy Birthday to Jim” with their hands.

Henson started puppetry early. While a senior at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, Henson heard a local television station needed puppeteers for the Junior Good Morning Show. He quickly created his first puppets, Pierre the French Rat and cowboys Longhorn and Shorthorn, auditioned and was hired.

“I immediately wanted to work in television,” Henson was quoted as saying in Jim Henson: The Works. “I wasn’t really interested in puppetry then. It was just a means to an end.”

Henson’s work on WRC began as five-minute skits and evolved into his first television show, Sam and Friends, which he performed with Nebel. The show featured Sam, a foam-rubber bald man who bounced his head and lip-synched to popular music. The show aired for six years – all while Henson was still an undergraduate – and won a local Emmy in 1958.

The puppetry experience before and during college made the shy and quiet Henson overqualified for that senior-level puppetry class. Instructor Edward Longley assigned the class to create puppets controlled by hand, rod or the classic marionette-style. Instead, Henson combined the hand and rod puppets to create the revolutionary Muppet.

“Jim had other ideas – he took it very seriously with his puppets,” Longley said at Friday’s event.

Outside the classroom, Henson, an art studio major, also spent time working backstage for the theater department’s productions, designing and painting sets and programs.

Additionally, Henson started his own poster company, creating colorful signs for events such as art shows, parties and concerts. But he quit the successful – yet time-consuming – business because it was taking him away from his passion of puppetry.

Despite the skepticism of some of his peers, Henson was determined to bring the Muppets to the world.

“I told him, ‘You might as well be a teacher, because puppets aren’t gonna get you any money,'” Longley said. “He didn’t believe me.”

In contrast to Longley’s reservations, Henson’s career soon began to blossom. His Muppets appeared on the Steve Allen’s Tonight Show and Sam and Friends, and one puppet stood out from the rest: a green lizard made out of Henson’s mother’s coat and two cut-in-half ping-pong balls to form the eye balls. It was the very early version of Henson’s most famous Muppet, Kermit the Frog.

Following Henson’s 1960 graduation – for which he showed up in a rented Rolls-Royce – he began to film television commercials with his Muppet characters, and throughout the 1960s the Muppets were making regular appearances on programs such as The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show and The Jimmy Dean Show.

But Henson’s big break came when the Children’s Television Workshop hired him for its new, experimental program, Sesame Street. The show was unique for its personification of letters and numbers, use of jingles and appearances by Henson’s Muppets to educate children about multicultural acceptance. Sesame Street began in 1969 and continues today in 120 countries, with several international versions.

During the early success of Sesame Street, Henson was yearning to create a show for a more adult audience. Muppet skits appeared on the first season of Saturday Night Live in 1975, but the partnership failed to take off.

“They’d write lovely, far-out things for themselves and square, dull nothingness for our characters,” Henson said in 1977.

His wishes for creative freedom came true in 1976 when CBS agreed to take a chance with The Muppet Show, a prime-time program featuring an entirely Muppet cast. Except for the weekly guest hosts such as Bob Hope, Liberace and Diana Ross, the stars were Kermit, Miss Piggy, monsters and other “frogs and dogs and bears and chickens and whatever,” who entertained 106 countries during the show’s five seasons.

The Muppets were seemingly omnipotent, defying all previous perceptions of puppets: The Great Gonzo would fly out of cannons, Miss Piggy would karate kick her adversaries, and Animal would chase the diva guests.

At the 1979 Homecoming parade, dressed in a flowered shirt and a brown corduroy suit, Henson accepted the university’s Distinguished Alumnus Award with his alter-ego perched on his arm.

“Miss Piggy heard that they were kicking around a pigskin and all that stuff, and combined with the fact that all those people were eating hot dogs, well, she thought the whole thing was sort of barbaric,” Kermit said, apologizing for his swine soul mate’s absence.

And Henson spoke for himself, saying, “It’s a neat feeling to go to school here, to be one of 10,000 kids and to come back and be treated like the president.”

After The Muppet Show, as Henson’s creations became a fundamental part of pop culture, Henson continued to re-invent himself by creating three Muppet films, two fantasy films and several other television shows, such as Fraggle Rock.

“Suddenly it wasn’t just a children’s art form, it was a viable artistic expression,” said Lynnie Raybuck, a professional puppeteer for 30 years. “It’s hard to imagine a world without Jim’s contribution- He opened our eyes to what is possible.”

Contact reporter Ben Block at blockdbk@gmail.com.