The first person is Oprah Winfrey................“Oprah is a person who has become successful and spread it around to those who needs it the most. That is why she is my hero, mentor and role model”. She is such a fashionable woman, who looks her best at every occasion.
Oprah Winfrey is a very important philanthropist who created a remarkable school for girls in South Africa. Of course, all celebrities start from somewhere, But Oprah’s childhood was an unfortunate part of her life. Once she started to become famous, she gathered her money and pushed it toward the greater good of the world. Oprah wanted to create a charity of her own but in the form of a school.
Her school in South Africa is the new part of her life. She dreams that these girls (it is all girls’ school) will become Africa’s future leaders. Oprah’s childhood helped her to be strong and become an amazing and successful person. It also told her that she does not want others to suffer from terrible things like she did.
Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29th 1954, to a pair of unmarried teenagers in Kosciusko, Mississippi. She was born into a Baptist family and her mother, Vernita Lee, originally wanted her name to be Orpah, a name from the Bible, but she accidentally misspelled her name and spelled it Oprah, but her Dad, Vernon Winfrey, liked it so she was named Oprah Gail Winfrey.
Oprah’s parents were having a tough time figuring out what was going to happen to them and their new baby Oprah. So, Oprah lived with her grandmother until she was six when her grandmother died. After the tragic death of her grandmother, Oprah moved in with her mother and three half brothers. They lived in an inner city ghetto in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
After living with her mother for a few years, Oprah was being abused by close relatives that her family trusted. This abuse started at the young age of nine. Being mixed into these unfortunate events, Oprah was also becoming a tough to deal with teenager. She ran away from home numerous times. She was the type of who teen that would break her glasses in order for her mother to buy her some newer, more stylish pair of glasses. And to top it all of, she got pregnant at the young age of fourteen. Sadly, the baby died after birth.
Her mother could not take it anymore so she sent her daughter to live with her father in Nashville, Tennessee. Her father was a lot stricter than her mother. In fact, he made her learn five vocabulary words each day or else she would not receive any dinner. This was an important part of young Winfrey’s life because from this point on she was very successful.
When Oprah went to a new high school in Nashville, she became an excellent student. She was an honors student and she was voted most popular girl. She was also academically successful too. She joined the school’s speech team and placed second at a national competition. Her skills of being an incredible speaker won her first place at an Oratory contest and earned a scholarship to Tennessee State University.
From this point on, Oprah started to become the celebrity that we know today. Starting with her freshman year at Tennessee State University, she won herself the titles of Miss Black Nashville and Miss Black Tennessee. With all her publicity and her background on being a good speaker, Oprah got a job as the first African American female co-anchor at the age of nineteen.
After graduating from Tennessee State University in 1976 with a degree in communications, she took the next step in her life by becoming apart of the news anchor business. Her first place as a new news anchor was in Baltimore as the co anchor of the six o’clock news. Then she was recruited to the local talk show People Are Talking, and she hosted the local version of Dialing for Dollars there, too.
After doing some local business in Baltimore, Oprah Winfrey became the head anchor of AM Chicago. She went from bad reviews to the highest rated talk show in Chicago! Then, in 1985, due to the popularity of the show, it was renamed the Oprah Winfrey Show. By the next year, the show was broadcast nationally. It soon became the number one talk show in America. Now she has fully transformed into the Oprah Winfrey that we know today.
Due to her success, Oprah has her own book club, magazine (“O” Magazine), and (as I said before) talk show! But, she still felt like something was missing. So, she went to the Nelson Mandela Foundation and started one of the three Christmas Kindness’. She felt that the children that she helped were just like her when she was at age nine. Young, helpless, and, nowhere to turn, so, she helped out with other foundations such as, Moorehouse College, The Harold Washington Library, The United Negro College Fund, Tennessee State University Fund, Nelson Mandela Foundation, and, Christmas Kindness’. This was the beginning of Oprah’s philanthropy.
Oprah felt that she did not feel apart of the organizations that she wrote checks to. So she made a school in South Africa called Oprah’s Leadership Academy. She began to choose girls for her school - mostly orphans and girls that she met from previous Christmas Kindness’. She wants the girls that attend her school to grow up to be Africa’s future leaders. She also wants them to be successful just like she is.
For more information about her life, you can click on his link..............http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey
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