The e-mails poured in about readers' special connection to Sidney Poitier, and after weeks of intense screening, the guest list was complete. Seven special readers got to join Sidney and Oprah for the dinner of a lifetime.

Among those guests was Dawnn, a single mom from San Diego who says she used Sidney's book as a guide to raising her two sons.

"At 23, I was a divorced mother of two young sons. As a single young mother, I stressed education, community service and spirituality," Dawnn wrote.

Feeling it was important to expose her sons to as many opportunities as possible, Dawnn says 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 says. "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."