Cissy Houston - Remembering Whitney - A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss and the Night the Music Died

Cover

Title Page

Dedication This book is dedicated to my immediate family, particularly my sons and my grandchildren, and to all the world of wonderful fans who loved my daughter. Hopefully you may get to know Whitney through the love I’ve shown in these pages.

Epigraph “I’ll lend you for a little time a child of mine,” He said. “For you to love while she lives and mourn for when she’s dead.…” —adapted from “I’ll Lend You a Child” by Edgar Guest

Foreword

Part One

CHAPTER 1 The Night the Music Stopped

CHAPTER 2 A Child of Newark

CHAPTER 3 The Gospel Truth

CHAPTER 4 Sweet Inspirations

CHAPTER 5 Life on Dodd Street

CHAPTER 6 Training the Voice

CHAPTER 7 Separation

Part Two

CHAPTER 8 Enter Clive Davis

CHAPTER 9 Fame

CHAPTER 10 Welcome Home Heroes

CHAPTER 11 The Bodyguard … and Bobby Brown

CHAPTER 12 “I Never Asked for this Madness”

CHAPTER 13 “I Know Him So Well”

CHAPTER 14 A Very Bad Year

Part Three

CHAPTER 15 Atlanta

CHAPTER 16 The Intervention

CHAPTER 17 The Comeback

CHAPTER 18 “I Look to You”

CHAPTER 19 Bringing My Daughter Home

Epilogue

Picture Section

Acknowledgments

Selected Cissy Houston Discography

Selected Whitney Houston Discography

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

This book is dedicated to my immediate family, particularly my sons and my grandchildren, and to all the world of wonderful fans who loved my daughter. Hopefully you may get to know Whitney through the love I’ve shown in these pages.

“I’ll lend you for a little time a child of mine,” He said.

“For you to love while she lives and mourn for when she’s dead.…”

—adapted from “I’ll Lend You a Child”

by Edgar Guest

I’ve known Cissy Houston my whole life. She’s my aunt—her sister Lee is my mother—but because we’re only seven years apart, she felt more like an older sister to me.

When I was growing up, Cissy even lived with us for a while in East Orange, so I got to know her pretty well. I can still hear her voice, telling my sister Dee Dee and me, “I am older, and you are going to do as I say.” She might have felt like an older sister to us, but she never let us forget she was our aunt. She was a strong young woman then, and she is a strong, loving woman now.

From the time we were children, we all sang together at St. Luke’s A.M.E. Church in Newark, where my grandfather was the minister. Later, when he moved away, we all joined New Hope Baptist Church. My sister Dee Dee and I sang in the junior choir there, and Cissy rehearsed us and arranged songs for us. Music was always in our family’s blood. But there were two things even more important to us than music: family and faith.

When she started having children, Cissy became very mother-oriented. Her kids were primary in her life—she had to be with her babies. There was a great deal of love in their house. And we all loved her children, Gary, Michael, and Nippy.

When Cissy’s kids were small, I used to like to bring them out on the road with me. By that time, I had a solo career and was touring all over the world, so during the summers, when they weren’t in school, I’d bring them out to join me. They were just regular little kids on summer vacation, but they did learn how to use room service very, very quickly. It was all I could do to keep those children from ordering everything in the world up to the room.

Nippy used to talk with me about her mother, just the usual kids’ stuff of “Why won’t she let me do this?” and “How come the other kids get to do that?” But later on, she came to realize why her mother did the things she did. We all were brought up in the same way—it was instilled in us to respect our elders, to love God, and to walk the straight and narrow. And that’s what Cissy tried to teach her own children, too.

Cissy has always wanted the best for everyone in her family. She’s always giving encouragement and support, and she’s tried on many occasions to give advice. Whenever she saw something that wasn’t sitting too well with her, she’d speak up. As I did. In our family, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

But while Cissy was strong and loving, Nippy was always a little girl, even during her womanhood. Yes, she was ambitious, and she had a silent strength. But I’m not sure it was ever really tapped into. We all know of Nippy’s beauty and her amazing vocal skills. But in Cissy’s book, you will learn about the little girl behind all that.

It’s a privilege to have a peek inside someone’s life, and that’s what Cissy is offering in this book. The truth has always been paramount for Cissy, and I believe she has given the truth within these pages. The fact that she found the strength to write it now, given the grief she has suffered, is a testament to her faith: she is being led to share her true feelings about herself and her beloved daughter.

I hope all of us can take a lesson or two from it, and that with this book, everyone can read about and understand who Whitney Houston truly was.

Dionne Warwick

November 2012

It was the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday when I heard my doorbell ring.

I wasn’t expecting anyone, and walking to the door I felt a little irritated about a surprise visit. But when I opened it, no one was there, so I just shut the door and went back to whatever I was doing. Who would be ringing my bell and disappearing in the middle of the day? My apartment building had a doorman, and it wasn’t like people were just dropping by all the time.

Not long after, I heard that bell ring again. I got up and went to answer it, really irritated now. But again, no one was there. Now, this just didn’t make sense. Why would someone be messing with me like this? I called down to the front desk.

“Has anyone come up to see me?” I asked the concierge.

“No, Mrs. Houston,” he said. “I haven’t seen anyone on the cameras, either.” Well then, who was ringing my bell?

Not long after that, around six or six-thirty in the evening, my phone rang. When I picked it up, all I could hear was screaming.

“Oh, Mommy! It’s Nippy! It’s Nippy!” It was my son Gary on the line, and he was hysterical.

“Gary, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Nippy,” he said again. “They found her!”

“Found her where?”

“They found her upstairs,” he cried. “They found her upstairs and I’m not going back up there!”

“Gary, what happened?” I snapped, frightened now. “You’ve got to tell me what’s wrong!”

He never did say what had happened, maybe because he didn’t know exactly, or maybe because he was in shock. He just kept mumbling, “Oh, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” until I finally said, “Gary, is she dead?”

And he said, “Yes, Mommy. She’s dead.”

And that was the moment my whole world shattered.