Media mogul Oprah Winfrey is known for her business savvy, her desire for everyone to live their best life, and her uplifting spirit. Now, the OWN network star needs some uplifting herself after the passing of her mother, Vernita Lee, on Thanksgiving day. She was 83.
The Greenleaf star’s mother was born on May 2, 1935 and worked as a housekeeper throughout her life. She is survived by Winfrey and daughter Patricia Amanda Faye Lee, who she placed for adoption at birth and reconnected with later in life.
Lee also had two other children — son Jeffrey Lee, who passed in 1989 and daughter Patricia Lee Lloyd, who passed in 2003.
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While the cause of death is unknown, before her death, Lee spent her final years in the comfort of her home given to her by Oprah.
During a 2010 interview with Barbara Walters, Winfrey explained she retired her mother and father after she gained success from The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Winfrey was born in rural Kosciusko, Mississippi, to Lee who was an unmarried teenage mother. Lee stated that Oprah's birth was due to a single sexual encounter and the couple broke up not long after. Oprah was molested during her childhood and early teens and became pregnant at 14; her son passed in infancy. She was then sent to live with the man she calls her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber in Tennessee. Even though, a Mississippi farmer and World War II veteran Noah Robinson Sr. has claimed to be her biological father.
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After Winfrey's birth, her mother traveled north and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her maternal grandmother, Hattie Mae (Presley) Lee (April 15, 1900 – February 27, 1963), who was so poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, for which the local children made fun of her. Her grandmother taught her to...
... read before the age of three and took her to the local church, where she was nicknamed "The Preacher" for her ability to recite Bible verses.
On Monday, November 26, 2018, four days after Lee transitioned in her home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Thanksgiving, Winfrey, 64, shared a sweet family photo with her mother and thanked fans for their support and sympathy.
“Thank you all for your kind words and condolences regarding my mother Vernita Lee’s passing. It gives our family great comfort knowing she lived a good life and is now at peace,” Winfrey wrote.
“[I wanted] to take care of them and to provide for them and to make sure that they never had to want for anything as they tried to do for me,” the mogul said.
