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Whitney Houston’s Daughter ‘Fighting for Her Life’ 

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In this Feb. 12, 2011, file photo, singer Whitney Houston, left, and daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown arrive at an event in Beverly Hills, Calif. Messages of support were being offered Monday, Feb. 2, 2015, as people awaited word on Brown, who authorities say was found face down and unresponsive in a bathtub over the weekend in a suburban Atlanta home. (AP Photo/Dan Steinberg, File)

In this Feb. 12, 2011, file photo, singer Whitney Houston, left, and daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown arrive at an event in Beverly Hills, Calif. Messages of support were being offered Monday, Feb. 2, 2015, as people awaited word on Brown, who authorities say was found face down and unresponsive in a bathtub over the weekend in a suburban Atlanta home. (AP Photo/Dan Steinberg, File)

KATE BRUMBACK, Associated Press
TAMARA LUSH, Associated Press

ROSWELL, Ga. (AP) — Bobbi Kristina Houston wanted to sing, act and dance like her megastar parents, Whitney Houston and R&B artist Bobby Brown. Instead, she has mostly made tabloid headlines for drug use and family disputes — the same perils that derailed their careers.

Just like her mother three years ago, Bobbi Kristina was found face-down and unresponsive in a bathtub as the music industry prepared for the Grammy Awards.

As the pop star’s 21-year-old daughter lay hospitalized Monday, police in Roswell, Georgia, issued a very brief incident report, saying officers were called Saturday in response to her “drowning” at her home in suburban Atlanta. Her husband, Nick Gordon, was at the scene and tried to revive her while a friend called 911.

“Bobbi Kristina is fighting for her life and is surrounded by immediate family,” a Houston family statement said Monday. “We are asking you to honor our request for privacy during this difficult time. Thank you for your prayers, well wishes, and we greatly appreciate your continued support.”

With no details forthcoming from police or family about her condition or what may have caused the tragedy, many people looked to see what she’s been posting online. Her last tweet, from Thursday, reflected obvious frustration over her failure to break out as an entertainer: “Let’s start this career up&&moving OUT to TO YOU ALLLL quick shall we !?!???!”

The circumstances were eerily similar to those of Feb. 11, 2012, when Houston’s assistant found the singer’s lifeless body face-down in a foot of water in her bathtub at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Authorities found prescription drugs and listed heart disease and cocaine use as contributors, but concluded that she accidentally drowned.

Bobbi Kristina, then 18, became so distraught that she needed to be hospitalized.

“She wasn’t only a mother, she was a best friend,” she told Oprah shortly thereafter.

Bobbi Kristina identified herself on Twitter as “Daughter of Queen WH,” ”Entertainer/Actress” with William Morris & Co., and “LAST of a dying breed.”

But her mother was an impossible act to follow.

Houston had her first No. 1 hit at 22, and then a flurry of No. 1 songs, selling more than 50 million records in the United States alone. Her voice, an ideal blend of power, grace and beauty, made classics out of “Saving All My Love For You,” ”I Will Always Love You,” ”The Greatest Love of All” and “I’m Every Woman.” Her six Grammys joined many other awards.

Bobbi Kristina inherited her mother’s entire estate, but not her voice. Aside from her family’s short-lived reality TV show “The Houstons: On Our Own,” she has mostly appeared in online “selfies” and paparazzi images.

Houston met R&B star Bobby Brown at the Soul Train Music Awards in 1989. The gifted singer and her bad boy partner married in 1992, much to the dismay of Houston’s family. It was a toxic relationship, characterized by domestic violence and drugs.

Bobbi Kristina was born a year later, and was just a toddler when Houston described herself as a “functioning junkie” to S2SMagazine. Her husband also struggled with addiction, so by 2002, the family moved to suburban Atlanta to attend the healing services of a singer-turned evangelical preacher.

The girl made a few appearances on “Being Bobby Brown,” the reality show that infamously captured her parents fighting, swearing and appearing in court. The Hollywood Reporter said “not only does it reveal Brown to be even more vulgar than the tabloids suggest, but it manages at the same time to rob Houston of any last shreds of dignity.”

Soon, Gordon joined the family. Houston never formally adopted him, but he became like a brother to Bobbi Kristina. And when Houston sought rehab in California in 2004 and divorced Brown in 2007, she kept the kids with her.

The pair called each other big brother and little sister back then. A month after Houston’s death, however, they went public with their relationship. Houston’s mother, Cissy, and sister-in-law Patricia, expressing concern that others would prey on the young woman’s fortune, petitioned a judge to delay part of her inheritance, and Bobbi Kristina agreed.

The young couple’s announcement of their marriage in January 2014 troubled Patricia Houston, who soon obtained a restraining order against Gordon, effective through April 2015.

“Damn, lol, it’s incredible how the world will judge you 4ANY&EVERYthing,” Bobbi Kristina tweeted last March.

But by September, Patricia Houston was praising her niece.

“I’m very proud of Krissy. You know, young people today are up against so much with social media and everything else that presents itself to them, and they have to use everything within their power to stay abreast and to keep a foundation, and that’s what the family does,” Patricia Houston told The Associated Press. “We try to be there for her, just to try to guide and direct her.”

Throughout, Bobbi Kristina expressed love for her husband. Just last week, she tweeted again: “Littlelady&yourgrowing young man @nickdgordon miss you mommy ..:’) SOmuch.. loving you more every sec. #Anniversary!”

___

Lush reported from St. Petersburg, Florida. Kathleen Foody and Mesfin Fekdu contributed to this report.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Oakland Post: Week of April 24 – 30, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 24 – 30, 2024

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Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

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O.J. Simpson, 76, Dies of Prostate Cancer

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson, who rose to fame as a college football player who went on to the NFL and parlayed his talents in acting and sportscasting, succumbed to prostate cancer on April 10, his family announced.

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Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson. Wikipedia photo.
Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson. Wikipedia photo

By Post Staff

 Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson, who rose to fame as a college football player who went on to the NFL and parlayed his talents in acting and sportscasting, succumbed to prostate cancer on April 10, his family announced.

Born and raised in San Francisco, the Galileo High School graduate was recruited by the University of Southern California after he was on a winning Junior College All-American team.

At USC, he gained wide acclaim as a running back leading to him becoming the No. 1 pick in the AFL-NFL draft in 1969 and joining the Buffalo Bills, where he had demanded – and received — the largest contract in professional sports history: $650,000 over five years. In 1978, the Bills traded Simpson to his hometown team, the San Francisco 49ers, retiring from the game in 1979.

Simpson’s acting career had begun before his pro football career with small parts in 1960s TV (“Dragnet”) before “Roots” and film (“The Klansman,” “The Towering Inferno,” Capricorn One”).

He was also a commentator for “Monday Night Football,” and “The NFL on NBC,” and in the mid-1970s Simpson’s good looks and amiability made him, according to People magazine, “the first b\Black athlete to become a bona fide lovable media superstar.”

The Hertz rent-a-car commercials raised his recognition factor while raising Hertz’s profit by than 50%, making him critical to the company’s bottom line.

It could be said that even more than his success as a football star, the commercials of his running through airports endeared him to the Black community at a time when it was still unusual for a Black person to represent a national, mainstream company.

He remained on Hertz team into the 1990s while also getting income endorsing Pioneer Chicken, Honey Baked Ham and Calistoga water company products and running O.J. Simpson Enterprises, which owned hotels and restaurants.

He married childhood sweetheart Marguerite Whitley when he was 19 and became the father of three children. Before he divorced in 1979, he met waitress and beauty queen Nicole Brown, who he would marry in 1985. A stormy relationship before, during and after their marriage ended, it would lead to a highway car chase as police sought to arrest Simpson for the murder by stabbing of Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.

The pursuit, arrest, and trial of Simpson were among the most widely publicized events in American history, Wikipedia reported.

Characterized as the “Trial of the Century,” he was acquitted by a jury in 1995 but found liable in the amount of $33 million in a civil action filed by the victims’ families three years later.

Simpson would be ensnared in the criminal justice system 12 years later when he was arrested after forcing his way into a Las Vegas hotel room to recover sports memorabilia he believed belonged to him.

In 2008, he received a sentence of 33 years and was paroled nine years later in 2017.

When his death was announced, Simpson’s accomplishments and downfalls were acknowledged.

Sports analyst Christine Brennan said: “… Even if you didn’t love football, you knew O.J. because of his ability to transcend sports and of course become the businessman and the pitchman that he was.

“And then the trial, and the civil trial, the civil case he lost, and the fall from grace that was extraordinary and well-deserved, absolutely self-induced, and a man that would never be seen the same again,” she added.

“OJ Simpson played an important role in exposing the racial divisions in America,” attorney Alan Dershowitz, an adviser on Simpson’s legal “dream team” told the Associated Press by telephone. “His trial also exposed police corruption among some officials in the Los Angeles Police Department. He will leave a mixed legacy. Great athlete. Many people think he was guilty. Some think he was innocent.”

“Cookie and I are praying for O.J. Simpson’s children … and his grandchildren following his passing. I know this is a difficult time,” Magic Johnson said on X.

“I feel that the system failed Nicole Brown Simpson and failed battered women everywhere,” attorney Gloria Allred, who once represented Nicole’s family, told ABC News. “I don’t mourn for O.J. Simpson. I do mourn for Nicole Brown Simpson and her family, and they should be remembered.”

Simpson was diagnosed with prostate cancer about a year ago and was undergoing chemotherapy treatment, according to Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter. He died in his Las Vegas, Nevada, home with his family at his side.

He is survived by four children: Arnelle and Jason from his first marriage and Sydney and Justin from his second marriage. He was predeceased son, Aaren, who drowned in a family swimming pool in 1979.

Sources for this report include Wikipedia, ABC News, Associated Press, and X.

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