Memories of Esther Rolle

In my life I watched Esther Rolle in various roles as a function of that television available to me.

She was an American actress and star of stage and screen born November 8, 1920 who lived through November 17, 1998.

I regularly viewed the comedy Good Times and participated in the antics of the family of Florida Evans.

A lot of people watched that program for Jimmy Walker. I watched it for Esther Rolle.

Her credits went far beyond this and toward the end of her career the film Rosewood had her portray a character called Aunt Sarah, a sweet woman who was murdered in the acompanying fray and I cried with Don Cheadle as he rode the train after escaping in her casket.

From Maude, Touched by an Angel and Murder She Wrote through Fantasy Island, Driving Miss Daisy, Cleopatra Jones, and even Poltergeist: The Legacy she was an award winning actress who passed from the sequela of diabetes too soon and she was always instantly recognizable by me and for whom I would take pause to enjoy yet another character in her vast repetoire.

She had a knack for portraying family and was always someone to whom I could relate.