Oprah's Half-Sister, Patricia No. 2: Vernita's Secret Child

Well, well, Oprah's Big Secret was a second half-sister named Patricia which was also her first half-sister's name. This was not a case of running out of baby name ideas. Oprah's mother, Vernita, did not name the "secret" daughter she gave up for adoption and it is one of those weird coincidences that the child was named Patricia by her adopted parents.

If you have any sense of humor at all, you really have to laugh. Oprah makes a big media event out of this revelation, yet would have felt betrayed if Patricia No. 2 had gone to the press.

Oprah heartily praised her new half sister for not going to the press when Patricia No. 2 found out that Oprah was her half-sister, like her other half-sister Patricia No. 1 did, spilling the beans on Oprah's teen-age pregnancy and selling sex as a teenager.

"I thought I'd seen it all," the talk show queen said on Friday, January 21st: "But this, my friends, is the miracle of all miracles." When she learned this stunning news, it "literally shook me to my core."

Why would the news that her mother had another baby that she gave up for adoption shake her "to the core" when she already knew she had a couple of other half-siblings -- Patricia and Jeffrey? Much has been written on Oprah's strained relationships with her half-siblings and also how Oprah felt her mother, Vernita Lee, preferred her younger children to Oprah. Indeed it's even been said that Oprah's mom never had much maternal feeling for her daughter until fame and fortune entered the picture.

Oprah's mom Vernita allegedly gave birth to Patricia No. 2 when Oprah was nine. Most Oprah biographies put Oprah's age at the time she was first sexually abused as nine when she was temporarily living with relatives of Vernita when that happened. So Vernita was somewhere with her unwanted pregnancy. Yet on the show, it was said that Oprah was living with her father, Vernon Winfrey (although other reports say Vernon is not her biological father). Well, I will leave that for someone else to unravel, and continue with Oprah's show:

Oprah showed a televised segment where she and Patricia No. 2 confront Vernita, whose speech is impaired from a recent stroke. What possessed Oprah to do that? She later goes on to say that Vernita has been having a tough time embracing Patricia No. 2 because of shame. So why shame a sick woman some more by televising this confrontation?

But, evidently it is building up to a moment where Oprah can play Wise Talk Show Guru and share that well-known wisdom at her mother's expense. "Vernita, you can let that go," Oprah proclaims to the camera, "Millions of people just like you have gone through this." She then spins Patricia No. 1's betrayal into "a gift" because it released Oprah from the type of shame Vernita is still suffering from. "Freedom to all!" Oprah proclaims.

Patricia No. 1 died in 2003 of a suspected drug overdose in New Berlin, Wisconsin. Oprah's half-brother Jeffrey died of AIDs in 1989 in Milwaukee. Wisconsin, telling the National Enquirer shortly before his death that Oprah "disowned" him.

With all this dysfunction in Oprah Winfrey's family, I should probably wish her a much less dysfunctional relationship with Patricia No. 2, and I would, too, if it wasn't for her crazy messiah antics.

Sources:
Oprah Winfrey Show
Oprah Winfrey: a biography (2004) by Helen S. Garson