OPRAH WINFREY ~

---> Oprah Winfrey Accepts the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 25th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards.

OPRAH BACKGROUND...

Though there are conflicting reports as to how her name became "Oprah", Winfrey was originally named Orpah after the Biblical character in the Book of Ruth. According to an interview with the Academy of Achievement, Winfrey claimed that her family and friends' inability to pronounce “Orpah” caused them to put the “P” before the “R” in every place else other than the birth certificate. However, there is the account that the midwife transposed letters while filling out the newborn's birth certificate.

Winfrey was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi to unmarried parents. She later explained that her conception was due to a single sexual encounter that her two teenage parents had; they quickly broke up not long after.[25] Her mother, Vernita Lee, was a housemaid, and her father, Vernon Winfrey, was a coal miner and later worked as a barber before becoming a city councilman. Winfrey's father was in the Armed Forces when she was born.

After her birth, Winfrey's mother traveled north and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her grandmother, Hattie Mae Lee, who was so poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, for which the local children made fun of her.[26] Her grandmother taught her to read before the age of three and took her to the local church, where she was nicknamed "The Preacher" for her ability to recite Bible verses. When Winfrey was a child, her grandmother would take a switch and would hit her with it when she didn't do chores or if she misbehaved in any way.

At age six, Winfrey moved to an inner-city neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her mother, who was less supportive and encouraging than her grandmother had been, due in large part to the long hours Vernita Lee worked as a maid.[28] Winfrey has stated that she was molested by her cousin, her uncle, and a family friend, starting when she was nine years old,[29] something she first revealed to her viewers on a 1986 episode of her TV show, when sexual abuse was being discussed.

Despite her dysfunctional home life, Winfrey skipped two of her earliest grades, became the teacher's pet, and by the time she was 13 received a scholarship to attend Nicolet High School in the Milwaukee suburb of Glendale, Wisconsin[citation needed]. After suffering years of abuse, at 13 Winfrey ran away from home.[31] When she was 14, she became pregnant, but her son died shortly after birth.[24] Also at that age, her frustrated mother sent her to live with her father in Nashville, Tennessee. Vernon was strict, but encouraging and made her education a priority. Winfrey became an honors student, was voted Most Popular Girl, joined her high school speech team at East Nashville High School, and placed second in the nation in dramatic interpretation. She won an oratory contest, which secured her a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, a historically black institution, where she studied communication. At age 17, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant.[32] She also attracted the attention of the local black radio station, WVOL, which hired her to do the news part-time.[29] She worked there during her senior year of high school, and again while in her first two years of college.

Winfrey's career choice in media did not surprise her grandmother, who once said that ever since Winfrey could talk, she was on stage. As a child she played games interviewing her corncob doll and the crows on the fence of her family's property. Winfrey later acknowledged her grandmother's influence, saying it was Hattie Mae who had encouraged her to speak in public and "gave me a positive sense of myself."

Working in local media, she was both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at Nashville's WLAC-TV. She moved to Baltimore's WJZ-TV in 1976 to co-anchor the six o'clock news. She was then recruited to join Richard Sher as co-host of WJZ's local talk show People Are Talking, which premiered on August 14, 1978. She also hosted the local version of Dialing for Dollars there as well.

i love to hear when she say "i use this medium ( televison, media elctrectronic ) as one way to make people lead better life " =)

she is one of my idol, i love to watch her talkshow, i impress with her everytime she speak in front of hundreds viewer in Harpo studio,.. i learn to know from her that hardlife is not the end of the world, even you not perfect like the others or even you hold your own dark secret, dont let it be your obstacles to succeed..let it be you motivation to move forward.

oprah's prayer :- ' GOD use me, use me in this life, i dont know what the future holds for me, but i know there is a vision for my life greater than my imagination can hold, use me, use me what would you have me to do'

~ OPRAH one of my truly inspiration ~

~nur845~