(credit: AP)
An emotional Winfrey introduced her newly found sibling to viewers Monday and explained the woman’s persistent quest to find her birth mother.
“This, my friends, is the miracle of all miracles,” Winfrey said before bringing out the 48-year-old woman, who throughout the program was identified only as Patricia, with no mention of her occupation or any other details.
After years of searching for blood relatives, the woman met Winfrey on Thanksgiving Day of last year.
When Patricia was born in Milwaukee in 1963, the young Winfrey was living with her father and did not even know her mother was pregnant, she said.
Patricia, who Winfrey said bounced from foster home to foster home until she was adopted at age 7, had given up after previous searches for her mother. But she decided to resume looking several years ago at the insistence of her grown children.
The effort seemed to hit a dead end when a woman from the Wisconsin adoption agency called to respond to her inquiries.
“She was telling me that my birth mother had called her back, and she had made the decision at that particular time that she did not want to see me,” Patricia said.
Coincidentally, on the local news that day was a story about Winfrey’ mother, Vernita Lee, who revealed details about two of her children who had since died. Those details, Patricia said, matched information she had seen in papers about her own adoption.
Winfrey’s mother also said that one of the deceased children had been named Patricia.
“The hairs on the back of my neck stood up,” Patricia said. “Because I knew one of my siblings and I shared the same name.”
Later, she found more matching details, including the fact that Winfrey was born in 1954, the same year as the woman Patricia knew was her surviving sibling.
Patricia found the daughter of Winfrey’s dead sister in Milwaukee, and they took a DNA test that confirmed their relationship.
Lee, who recently suffered a minor stroke, said she never told Winfrey about her half-sister, “because I thought it was a terrible thing for me to do, that I had done, gave up my daughter when she was born.”
Winfrey said documents from the girl’s birth reveal that Lee gave up the baby for adoption because she did not think she could get off welfare if she kept the child.
“I made the decision to give her up because I wasn’t able to take care of her,” Lee said during a recorded interview that aired Monday. “So when I left the hospital, I told the nurse I wasn’t going to keep the baby.”
Winfrey said she was particularly stunned by the news because of the way it came out.
She said Patricia had known since 2007 that the two were related, but never attempted to profit off her discovery or contact the press, even as she tried unsuccessfully to contact Winfrey, her mother or others in Winfrey’s family.
“She never once thought to sell the story,” Winfrey said, recalling how she felt betrayed by others who have sought to take advantage of their relationship with one of the largest figures in the entertainment world and one of the wealthiest women in the United States.
Winfrey, for example, recalled how her other sister revealed to the press years ago that Winfrey had had a baby when she was a teenager. The baby, Winfrey has said, died shortly after birth. And she talked about putting her sister in rehab twice for drug addiction, but that her sister ultimately died.
Patricia said she didn’t consider revealing that she and Winfrey were half-sisters to anyone but Winfrey, explaining that she did not want to hurt Winfrey.
“Family business should be handled by family,” Patricia said. “It couldn’t be handled by anyone else. That’s not fair. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
Winfrey said she was heartened by learning that she had a half-sister, saying it “feels like closure” for the sister who died.
“It feels to me like you are Pat on her very best day,” Winfrey told the woman. “You are what she wanted to be without the drugs.”
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
【美联社芝加哥1月24日电】奥普拉·温弗里最近得知,一位住在密尔沃基的女士是她同母异父的妹妹。温弗里的母亲近50年前把后者送给别人收养。
在今天播出的“奥普拉·温弗里脱口秀”上,情绪激动的温弗里介绍了一位叫做帕特里夏的女士,并告诉观众这位女士多年来一直在寻找她的家人,最后终于在去年的感恩节见到了温弗里本人。
温弗里告诉观众,这次相认是“奇迹中的奇迹”。温弗里说,获悉自己还有个妹妹让她感到很惊讶。帕特里夏于1963年出生时,8岁的温弗里正和父亲住在一起。她甚至不知道自己的母亲怀孕了。
帕特里夏一直在寻找自己的生母。巧合的是,有一天,帕特里夏在当地的新闻里看到温弗里的母亲在讲述自己的孩子中的两个是怎么去世的。这些细节与她在领养文件中看到的内容相吻合。文件上说,帕特里夏曾有两个姐妹和一个兄弟,现在只有她的一个姐姐还在世。
温弗里的母亲韦尔尼塔·李也透露说,自己已故的子女中有一个叫做帕特里夏。
帕特里夏说:“听到这些,我脖子上的汗毛都竖起来了。”
不久,她发现了更多匹配的细节。比如说,温弗里生于1954年,而帕特里夏知道的那个还健在的姐姐也在那一年出生。
温弗里说,DNA测试证实她和帕特里夏是同母异父姐妹。她在录制脱口秀前和帕特里夏以及她们的母亲见了面。
