As news of her mother’s death spread on Monday, Oprah Winfrey thanked people for their condolences.

Oprah Winfrey’s mother, Vernita Lee, died at her Milwaukee home last week, her family announced Monday.  

“Thank you all for your kind words and condolences regarding my mother Vernita Lee’s passing,” wrote on Instagram.

“It gives our family great comfort knowing she lived a good life and is now at Peace.

Lee was 18 when she gave birth to her first child in rural Mississippi, naming her “Orpah” after a woman mentioned in the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Ruth, but many mispronounced it as Oprah and the name stuck.

Lee died on Thanksgiving at the age of 83.

After living with her grandmother in Mississippi for the first six years of her life, Winfrey traveled to Milwaukee to live with her mother. In 1959 Lee gave birth to Winfrey’s younger half-sister, who died in 2003, followed by a son who died in 1989.

On a 2003 visit to the City of Pewaukee, Winfrey spoke about her childhood in Milwaukee at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s annual Freedom Fund dinner. She said her best Christmas ever was in Milwaukee when she was 12 and living on North 10th Street.

Lee, who was working as a housemaid in suburban Fox Point, told Winfrey that Santa Claus was not coming that year because the single mother didn’t have much money to buy presents. But on Christmas Eve, nuns brought food and toys for Winfrey and her siblings.

Winfrey said that experience was one of many that taught her that through giving “you enlarge the spirit of somebody else.”

Lee was a lifetime member of the NAACP and her daughter joked at the dinner that Lee had been asking her for years to come to Waukesha County to speak at the Freedom Fund event. Lee and a friend who was the NAACP Waukesha branch president sometimes attended tapings of her daughter’s TV show in Chicago bearing cakes to bribe Winfrey into coming to the dinner.

“Coming to Waukesha County on a Saturday evening was not my idea of a great time,” Winfrey said to an amused crowd. “But my mama convinced me it was gonna be a ‘wonderful evening.’ “

In 2011, Lee appeared on her daughter’s television show with a Milwaukee woman who was put up for adoption by Lee in 1963. Winfrey said on her show that she was stunned to learn she had another half-sister, Patricia Amanda Faye Lee, who also appeared on the show.

In 2011, Lee appeared on her daughter’s television show with a Milwaukee woman who was put up for adoption by Lee in 1963. Winfrey said on her show that she was stunned to learn she had another half-sister, Patricia Amanda Faye Lee, who also appeared on the show.

Patricia Lee was put up for adoption when Winfrey was 8 and living with her father in Nashville, Tennessee.

Lee said she never told Winfrey about Patricia “because I thought it was a terrible thing for me to do. … I made the decision to give her up because I was unable to totally take care of her.”

Winfrey said she had made peace with Lee’s decision. “To my mother, I say, ‘You can let this shame go.’ “

Winfrey later moved back to Milwaukee to live with her mother, a relationship that was difficult, and Winfrey later said that she ran away from home and gave birth at the age of 14 to a baby that who died soon after birth. After her daughter attended Lincoln High School and Nicolet High School, Lee sent Winfrey to again live with her father in Tennessee.

Winfrey thrived in Nashville, becoming an honors student and earning a scholarship at Tennessee State University.

In the 2000s, Lee was sued by a high-end fashion store for unpaid debts. Lee settled a $155,000 debt with Valentina Inc. in 2009.

Lee is survived by her daughters Winfrey and Lee, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Private funeral services were held. The family directed memorials to Feeding America in Lee’s name.

Follow us to see more useful information, as well as to give us more motivation to update more useful information for you.