Tennessee’s NASHVILLE — Vernon Winfrey, the father of Oprah Winfrey, passed away at the age of 89.
The passing of her father on Friday in Nashville, Tennessee, was confirmed by Oprah in an Instagram post.
The media tycoon wrote, “Yesterday, with family by his bedside, I had the sacred honor of witnessing the man responsible for my life, take his last breath. At his passing, “we could feel peace come into the room.”
Plans for the funeral were not immediately made public.
Oprah surprised her father earlier this week by hosting a Fourth of July barbecue for him in Nashville. The occasion was dubbed “Vernon Winfrey Appreciation Day,” and it featured a barber chair in recognition of his lengthy career as a barber and nearly 50 years of running his own business in Nashville.
Vernon was a trustee for Tennessee State University and a member of the Nashville Metro City Council for 16 years.
Oprah spent her early years in Milwaukee with her mother, Vernita Lee, who passed away in 2018, and in Kosciusko, Mississippi, the hometown of her late father. But between the ages of 7 and 9 and throughout her teenage years, she also resided in Nashville with her father.
Oprah claimed to the Washington Post in 1986 that she would have taken a different path if she hadn’t been sent to live with her father when she was 14 years old. “I could have been a successful criminal. These same instincts would have been applied differently by me.”
