Lucky Lady Dawnn Butler, Sidney Poitier and Oprah Winfrey
Camera Operator, Mark Schulze, videotapes Dawnn Butler at her apartment - Photo by Patty MooneyDawnn Butler never saw it coming. A single mother who had raised her two sons using Sidney Poitier as a role model, Dawnn had no idea that she was about to be surprised with an invitation to attend Oprah's "Dinner of a Lifetime" with special guest, Sidney Poitier. As a sound technician on the crew that day, I stood in the hallway, boom pole poised, waiting for her to answer the door to her apartment as Mark lifted his camera and Brian, the producer, rang the buzzer.
How had we come to be there? Oprah had sent out a call for submissions to people who thought they deserved to be invited to dinner with Oprah and Sid. There was a deluge of emails from readers who felt a special connecction to Sidney Poitier, and after weeks of intense screening, the guest list was narrowed to the lucky seven who would join Sidney and Oprah for the Dinner of a Lifetime.
Among those guests would be Dawnn, whose entry had been submitted by her sons. She was a single mom from San Diego and had used Sidney Poitier's life as a guide to raising her two sons. She had just finished reading Poitier's "Measure of a Man" when just a few weeks later, she opened her apartment door to Oprah's crew. Sneaky, eh?
"At 23, I was a divorced mother of two young sons. As a single young mother, I stressed education, community service and spirituality," Dawnn said. Feeling it was important to expose her sons to as many opportunities as possible, Dawnn described how she started her own consulting business and dedicated much of her time to helping others in the community. "With all of the community work, I never lost focus and continued to make my children my priority," she said. "When my son was accepted into the University of California—Berkeley School of Engineering, I knew the family team we built had become a success."
It was an event months in the making—the dinner of a lifetime for one of Oprah's heroes, Sidney Poitier with whom Oprah had been enthralled since seeing him win the Academy Award on her black-and-white television when she was a child. After Poitier published his book, "The Measure of a Man," Oprah chose it as a book club selection and decided to create a magical evening around it with Sidney and seven lucky readers. "The entire event was a labor of love, really, from my heart to the man who made me believe that I could dream a bigger dream," Oprah said.