Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [98]
During one of her visits to Kosciusko, Oprah had a late-night talk with her “aunt” Katharine and broke down in sobs, begging to know the name of her real father.
“She put her head on my shoulder and cried and cried,” recalled Mrs. Esters. “ ‘I know it’s not Vernon,’ she said to me. ‘There is nothing of Vernon in me. I know that and you know that.… You know the whole story; you were there. So, please, Aunt Katharine, tell me who my real father is.’ ”
“I just couldn’t do it,” said Mrs. Esters many years later. “I told her it was her mother’s place to tell her, not mine.
“ ‘My mother says it’s Vernon,’ Oprah said.”
Katharine Carr Esters raised her eyes as she related the story, torn between wanting Oprah to know the truth and disapproving of Oprah’s mother for not telling her. “I guess Bunny—that’s what the family calls Vernita—doesn’t want to get into it all at this stage, but I feel her daughter has a right to know if she wants to know. I just don’t have the right to tell her.”*
Shortly after this book was published in April 2010, Mrs. Esters was questioned by reporters about her intimate revelations. Apparently feeling pressure, she claimed she had been “tricked” into divulging her true feelings about Oprah and the lies she told about growing up poor in Mississippi. Mrs. Esters also denied that she had revealed the true identity of Oprah’s biological father, although she also had shared the same information with one of her closest friends. Hearing her mother’s denial, her daughter Jo Baldwin told her son, Conrad, who lives with Mrs. Esters, to call Oprah to tell her that his grandmother had not revealed the name of Oprah’s father to the author. “Conrad said he couldn’t make that call to Oprah,” said Jo Baldwin in an interview three months after publication of this book. “I asked him why not. He said, ‘Because I heard her say it.’ ”
The issue of Oprah’s real father stirred publicity, prompting at least one man to publicly declare paternity, which in turn prompted a response from Oprah when she was in New York to present an award to Gayle King.
“Last week was a rough week for Gayle when a so-called biography came out,” Oprah told a luncheon crowd at the Waldorf-Astoria. “Every day she’s getting herself more and more worked up about all of my new daddies that are now showing up. New daddies who are saying, ‘Hello, daughter, call me. I need a new roof.’ Well, this too shall pass.”
Vernita Lee sidestepped the issue of Oprah’s real father in a 2010 interview with N’Digo, a free weekly in Chicago. “The thing about Vernon is not Oprah’s father, I hear it and I don’t hear it,” she said. “They can say whatever. I know who I am and I don’t let that bother me. It will blow over or they will stop talking about it.”
During three days of on-the-record interviews with Mrs. Esters, she had said she understood why Vernita Lee was not inclined to rock her well-heeled boat late in life and admit that someone other than Vernon Winfrey was Oprah’s real father, especially since Oprah had never demanded a DNA test. Vernon had admitted he had not sired Oprah, but he took great pride in knowing that he had given her something better than blood.
“Oprah has taken very good care of her mother, who now buys five-hundred-dollar hats and has drivers who have drivers and helpers and cooks and all, but the story of Oprah and Vernita is sad and complicated,” said Mrs. Esters. “Oprah does not love her mother at all.… She gives her a great deal financially but she does not give her the respect and affection a daughter should, and that bothers me. Vernita did the best she could with Oprah, who was a willful, runaway child.… Her mother has had to bury two of her three children over the years, and I can tell you that when a parent loses a child it can bring you to your knees. I know. I had to bury my son.” She gestured to the painting