I wrote three books about growing up in the Bronx.
Somewhere in this process, I begin reading and showing my book to my audience. When I say my audience, I mean a single imaginary child who is a blend of myself as a young person, the students in my wife's classroom of first- through third-graders, and the students from two classrooms I visit regularly in the Bronx, New York.
I was born in Harlem, raised in the South Bronx, went to public school, got out of public college, went into the Army, and then I just stuck with it.
When I was four years old, my mother owned some tenements in the Bronx.
I had immigrant grandparents who came to this country and came for religious freedom and loved it, never made any money, Bronx, Brooklyn, but loved America. And they told me every day it's the greatest country in the world.
In the Bronx, you have the southern Italians; in Queens, the Greeks, Koreans and Chinese; in Brooklyn, the Jewish community; and in Harlem, the Hispanics - all with their own markets.
When you're a kid with artistic yearnings brought up in the Bronx, you don't get fed up too easily.
I fell in love with the most beautiful girl in the Bronx.
I actually had a job while I was acting and was a nursing student, which I had to drop due to my 9-5 job at the time. I managed an instrument room at a hospital in the Bronx.
In 2008, Milton Sheppard opened the Waiter Training School in the Bronx, N.Y., charging $175 for courses, but the business soon ran out of money. He now operates a clown college in the same space.
