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| Photo Credit: AP. |
Oprah Winfrey father, Vernon Winfrey has died at the age of 89 on Friday, July 8, 2022. In an Instagram post Oprah said her father died in Nashville, Tennessee.
“Yesterday
with family surrounding his bedside I had the sacred honor of witnessing the
man responsible for my life, take his last breath,” Oprah wrote. “We could feel
peace enter the room at his passing.”
According to
The Associated Press, earlier this week, Oprah organized a surprise barbeque
for her dad in Nashville on the Fourth of July. She called the event “Vernon
Winfrey Appreciation Day,” which included a barber chair to honor his long
career as a barber and owning his own shop in Nashville for nearly 50 years.
Vernon
served as a member of Nashville’s Metro City Council for 16 years and was a
trustee for the Tennessee State University.
Oprah spent
her early childhood at her father’s hometown of Kosciusko, Mississippi, and in
Milwaukee with her mother, Vernita Lee, who died in 2018, according to The
Associated Press. She lived with her father in Nashville, between the ages of 7
and 9 and as a teen.
“If I hadn’t
been sent to my father (when I was 14), I would have gone in another
direction,” Oprah told the Washington Post in 1986, The Associated Press
reported. “I could have made a good criminal. I would have used these same
instincts differently.”