To Sir, with Love Written By: Bert Moody To Sir Sidney Poitier, we the people of the world would like to say, “THANK YOU”. Sidney Poitier (February 20, 1927 – January 6, 2022) was an actor, film director, and diplomat. He was a trailblazer. He was a pioneer. And he was a legend. Sidney Poitier, who died on January 6th at age 94, was a ground-breaking performer … truly in a class all his own. Mr. Poitier’s family lived in the Bahamas but went to Miami, Florida to sell tomatoes when Sidney was born three months early. It was uncertain if he would survive so his father purchased a tiny casket. Sidney survived to live on Cat Island, Bahamas until he was 15 when his parents, worried about his delinquency, they sent him back to Miami to live with his older brother. But at 16 Poitier left Miami and moved to New York City. He enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II and served a brief stint in a medical unit. After the Army he went back to New York to try his hand at acting. Because he only had two years of schooling, and was illiterate, and he had a thick Bahamian accent he had a disastrous audition at the American Negro Theater and ended up becoming a dishwasher. One of the waiters was an elderly Jewish guy and he saw Sidney with a newspaper. Poitier said, “he walked over to me, and he looked at me and he said, ‘What’s new in the paper?’ And I looked up at this man and I said to him, ‘I can’t tell you what’s in the paper, because I can’t read very well.’ He said, ‘Let me ask you something, would you like me to read with you?’ I said to him, ‘Yes, if you like.’ “Now let me tell you something: Every night … every night, the place is closed, everyone’s gone, and he sat there with me, week after week after week. I learned a lot. He modeled his legendary speech pattern after radio personality Norman Brokenshire. “And then, things began to happen.” Poitier landed an acting apprenticeship with the very same theater company that earlier had
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