Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [93]
“I knew, knowing God as I do, that that would happen,” Oprah said, “but I kept asking, ‘Why has this happened and what am I supposed to learn from it?’ ” The answer, she believed, was what she had been telling her father: that her wealth and fame were so immense that people would try to use him to get to her. “My father still doesn’t know who I am,” she told Ebony, saying Vernon did not grasp the enormity of her celebrity. “So I think something had to happen for him to see he can’t continue to be Mr. Friendly-Friendly.” She said she felt guilty “because if he didn’t have me for a daughter that could not have happened to him.” But more than guilt was her fear of what the allegation might do to him. “I was really worried about him for a while, because I thought it was going to break his spirit.”
The snakebite of the sex scandal marked the end of Oprah’s involvement with TSU and the Vernon Winfrey scholarships. “They tried everything to reconnect, but she would not come back to Nashville,” said Brooks Parker, former aide to Governor Donald K. Sundquist. “I suggested that the city’s mayor and the governor send her an invitation saying they were going to give her a special award voted by the state legislature as the Most Outstanding Tennessean, or something like that.… It was planned as a citywide celebration, to take place on the campus of TSU.… I asked Chris Clark, her first boss, to write her a letter, which he did, and it was a great letter. Then I wrote to her, saying, ‘The state and city are set to pay dignified homage to you.’ But she never responded.”
After sending his letter, Chris Clark, who knows how to dance both sides of the ballroom, called Oprah’s assistant and told her to tell Oprah to ignore what he had written. “I said I wrote the damn letter because I had to and she shouldn’t pay any attention to it. She didn’t have to come home. No one else was going to get that award. It was just a publicity gimmick to get her to come to Nashville and be associated with TSU.” So Oprah declined the governor’s award.
She rarely returned to the city after that, except on occasion, to visit her father. “When she does come I send my adopted son [Thomas Walker] to pick her up at the airport in his police car,” said Vernon. “He’s with the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office.” Even on those unannounced visits, when they go out to eat catfish, Oprah is pestered for money. “We went to the cafeteria,” said Vernon’s second wife, Barbara, “and some lady slipped her a note asking for fifty thousand dollars.” Oprah ignored most requests from the city’s civic leaders for help on local projects. “No one in Nashville can get through to her,” said Paul Moore of the William Morris Agency. “Not even Tipper Gore.”
Oprah’s negative attitude toward Nashville seemed most obvious when the city was flooded with torrential rains in May 2010, causing ten deaths and flood damage estimated at $1.5 billion. Earlier she had mobilized her Angel Network to donate $1 million to Haiti after the earthquake in January 2010, but she did next to nothing four months later to help the people of Nashville. She did invite Dolly Parton to be on her show to solicit funds, but she did not provide a page on Oprah.com with links to make donations. Nor did she tweet or blog on her website about the need for money and assistance. For some, that slight must have felt like a slap.
When she was funding scholarships at TSU, she became a benefactor of Morehouse College, a private men’s school in Atlanta, Georgia, and the alma mater of Martin Luther King, Jr. “I did that because I care about black men, I really do,” she said. “The last two movies I have been in [The Color Purple and Native Son] have not been great portrayals of black men, but I have great black men in my life, both my father and Stedman.”
After receiving an honorary doctorate from Morehouse in 1988, she established the Oprah Winfrey Endowed Scholarship Fund, to which she donated $7 million. “My dream was—when I first