Saturday, April 17, 2010

7618: Oprah, Who’s Your Daddy?


From The New York Post…

Mississippi vet claims he’s Oprah’s dad

By Molly Parker Post Correspondent

Kosciusko, Miss.—An ailing, 84-year-old World War II veteran is making a desperate plea to Oprah Winfrey: Please admit I’m your father!

Norh Robinson, a dirt-poor Mississippi farmer now living in a rural VA hospital, wants Oprah to submit to a paternity test that he says would once and for all prove that he sired her in 1954.

Robinson said he dreams of just once speaking with Oprah as father and daughter before he dies—and revealed that, years ago, he tried to reach the talk-show queen to beg her to agree to a DNA test.

“I told her [in a letter], if she wanted, I’d give her one,” Robinson told The Post in an exclusive interview this week.

In the letter, he placed mementos from his life, including his Social Security number and a picture of him from the Navy in World War II, he said.

“I never got no answer,” Robinson told The Post. “I never did get no answer. If I did, it didn’t get to me.”

The vet insisted he wasn’t looking to get his hands on Oprah’s millions.

“I’d like her to call me,” he said.

Oprah’s spokeswoman said the TV host wasn’t available to comment on Robinson’s claims.

Oprah was raised by her mother, Vernita Lee, 75, and Lee’s longtime boyfriend, Vernon Winfrey. She considers Vernon her father but has figured out he isn’t her biological dad.

This week, the National Enquirer reported Robinson’s alleged tie to Oprah.

When reached in Kosciusko—the small town Winfrey ditched a half-century ago—Robinson insisted, “I’m her real father. I haven’t seen her since she was a kid. She was a little bitty thing.”

During a half-hour chat at his hospital, Robinson said that he met Oprah’s mom when they worked in the same part of Kosciusko and that he often drove her to and from work.

“I had to get by her house to get to my daddy’s house because it was on the same road,” he said.

Robinson said he’s looking forward to the day he gets to meet his world-famous daughter.

“She’s taken after her daddy,” he said. “I was a handsome man growing up at that time.”

Additional reporting by David K. Li and Todd Venezia in New York

No comments: