Oprah finds sister she never knew

Associated Press

CHICAGO

Oprah Winfrey recently learned she has a half-sister — a Milwaukee woman who was put up for adoption by Winfrey’s mother nearly 50 years ago.

On Monday’s “Oprah Winfrey Show,” a sometimes-emotional Winfrey introduced a woman she identified as Patricia, explaining how the woman’s search for her family culminated in a meeting with Winfrey on Thanksgiving Day 2010.

Winfrey said she was stunned to learn the news, saying that when Patricia was born in 1963, Winfrey was 8 and living with her father. She didn’t know her mother was pregnant.

Patricia said she had tried years ago to learn the identity of the woman who gave her up for adoption, and only started to try again a few years ago at the insistence of her two adult children, who also appeared on Monday’s show.

Patricia said she feared her search would be fruitless after she got a telephone call from the state adoption agency, which reported that her birth mother had been contacted and did not wish to meet her.

But, coincidentally, on the local news that day, she saw a story about Winfrey’s mother, who described how two of her children had died. Those details matched information Patricia had seen in adoption papers, which indicated she had two sisters and a brother, and that only the older sister was alive.

Winfrey’s mother, Vernita Lee, also disclosed that one of the deceased children was named Patricia.

“The hairs on the back of my neck stood up,” Patricia said. “Because I knew one of my siblings and I shared the same name.”

Later, she found more details that matched, including the fact that Winfrey was born in 1954, the same year as the woman Patricia knew was her surviving sibling.

Winfrey said DNA tests confirmed that the two are half-sisters. She, Patricia and their mother met in a pre- recorded part of the show.

Lee, who recently suffered a minor stroke, said she never told Winfrey about her half-sister, “because I thought it was a terrible thing for me to do, that I had done, gave up my daughter when she was born.”