I have a 3,500-word interview/profile with Oprah Winfrey online at the Sun's website. In the piece, Winfrey talks candidly about being "humiliated," "sexually harassed" and ultimately deciding that TV news was not for her during her years in Baltimore. The woman pictured here, Winfrey in her early twenties, is the one I write about in that story.
Here's the link, and I hope you will take a look. The pictures and videos would be worth it alone, I believe. But the resonance for Winfrey between what she says she is feeling now as her landmark syndicated show ends and what she felt when she was leaving Baltimore 27 years ago, resulted in her generously sharing an important part of her epic journey with me in our interview. And since she is such a great storyteller, her words are compelling.
Here's a bit of what she said about her feelings today -- and none of this appears in the magazine story. It starts with me asking Winfrey if her feelings today echo in any way with what she felt when she left Baltimore for Chicago.
"In every single passage that I've had I feel as if I've done as much as I can do here," she began. "I've done as much as I can do. I've grown as much as I can grow. And now, it's time for whatever's the next level for me -- whatever that's going to bring."
"So," she continued. "I felt when I left Baltimore that had I not been successful here [in Chicago] ... then I was going to find a way to move into another career. I thought maybe I'd go into PR, because I just felt like I had done as much growing as I could do in Baltimore at the time."
Winfrey says, "Now I feel that way with 'The Oprah Winfrey Show.' Lots of people say it's bittersweet. I say, 'It's all sweet, no bitter. All sweet, no bitter.' And the reason is that I've done as well as I know how to do. I don't know how to do it any differently or any better. And so, I know it's time to go and do the next thing. And I'm open to whatever that next chapter brings me for that reason: I've done this is well as I can do it."
(Pictured Oprah Winfrey WJZ photo in 1976. From the personal collection of Oprah Winfrey / May 4, 2011.)
"Just last night," Winfrey adds, "someone said, 'Oh, aren't you so sad?' And I said, 'No, I'm not sad at all.'
Winfrey already knows a big part of that next chapter involves the cable network OWN that she is co-owner of with the Discovery Channel. It has not gotten off to a spectacular start, but Winfrey vows that better days are ahead for it and her many fans who tune to it looking for the inspiration her talk show offered them in their own lives.
"It certainly is not what I want it to be right now," Winfrey said of OWN.
"But give me three years," she added, with a determined tone and a sense of conviction that made me a believer in its future.
What are your thoughts on Winfrey as she leaves the world of daytime talk that she has dominated for more than two decades? What has she meant to you? And do you have any memories of her in Baltimore?
