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Oprah Winfrey’s father Vernon has died. He was 88.
Vernon – who was a barber and businessman in Nashville – died on Friday after battling most cancers. Media mogul Oprah, 68, posted a tribute to her father on Saturday.
“Vernon Winfrey 1933-2022,” Oprah wrote within the caption. “Lower than every week in the past we honored my father in his personal yard. My good friend and gospel singer Wintley Phipps saluted him with tune. He FELT the love and reveled in it till he might not converse,” the TV host wrote, alongside a video of the second.
She continued, “Yesterday with household surrounding his bedside I had the sacred honor of witnessing the person answerable for my life, take his final breath. We might really feel Peace enter the room at his passing.”
“That Peace nonetheless abides. All is effectively. Thanks in your prayers and good ideas ??,” she ended the caption.
On Monday, Oprah celebrated the 4th of July by throwing her father a particular shock get together.
In a video shared on her Instagram, Oprah mentioned that though she was internet hosting a yard barbecue, the true purpose for the event was to carry a Vernon Winfrey Appreciation Day.
“My father is unwell and so we wished to have the ability to have all of his buddies come and rejoice him whereas he is in a position to obtain the enjoyment,” she mentioned whereas displaying off the banner behind her in her father’s honor.
When requested by her greatest good friend Gayle King if her father was “excited” in regards to the celebration, Oprah mentioned, “He would not even know that that is for him.”
“He thinks it is a Fourth of July factor,” she continued. “He would not know … He is gonna stroll out and see the whole lot.”
Working down the menu for the occasion, Oprah mentioned she was serving fried rooster, turkey, burgers “and all that stuff.”
She then wrapped the video by displaying her father taking within the second in a spot he knew greatest. “My dad is a barber so we put him within the barber chair,” she shared as she confirmed her dad sitting down throughout the yard.
Within the caption of her submit, Oprah wrote, “Giving my father his ‘flowers’ whereas he is nonetheless effectively sufficient to odor them. Pleased 4th of July as you collect with your loved ones and buddies. Bear in mind to rejoice one another ?”
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In June 2021, Oprah spoke with PEOPLE about her father forward of the OWN particular titled Honoring Our Kings, Celebrating Black Fatherhood, during which she co-hosted with This Is Us alum Sterling Okay. Brown.
“I had a father who took duty for me, though he knew I might have been any individual else’s youngster,” she mentioned of Vernon.
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“My mom and father by no means married,” she added. “They’d intercourse one time. He will get a letter after I am born saying, ‘Ship cash. You may have a daughter.’ And the explanation he did, he mentioned, is as a result of it might have been him. And the duty that he took for me, not only a duty however care and love and course and help as a younger teenage lady, is the factor that made the distinction in me being who I’m now or any individual you’ll have by no means, ever heard of.”
“I noticed that time and again in my father’s barbershop. Males would are available in, hardworking males, doing the whole lot they may of their lives to help their households, working generally two and three jobs to do this,” she continued. “So that is the story I do know of Black fathers — those I grew up with and the person I do know. The narrative of the absentee father, it is not correct that that’s the solely image. That is what I wish to say.”
