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I'd like to thank Cissy and Dionne for the honor of being here, for everybody in the Church treating my wife and I so gracefully. I'll say some stories, maybe some of them you know, maybe some of them you don't. I wrote them down because I didn't want to miss anything. A song "I will always love you” almost wasn't. It wasn't supposed to be in the movie. The first choice was going to be "What becomes of a broken heart", but it had been out the year before in another movie and we felt it wouldn't have the impact, and so we couldn't use it. So what becomes of our broken hearts? Whitney returns home today to the place where it all began, and I urge us all inside and outside, across the nation and around the world to dry our tears, suspend our sorrow and perhaps our anger just long enough, just long enough to remember the sweet miracle of Whitney. Never forgetting that Cissy and Bobbi Kristina are sitting among us. Your mother and I had a lot in common. I know many at this moment are thinking, really? She's a girl, you're a boy. You're white. She's black. We heard you like to sing, but our sister could really sing. So what am I talking about? Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, they don't have anything in common at all. Well, you'd be wrong about that. We both grew up in the Baptist Church.
It wasn't as big as this. My grandmother played the piano, and she led the choir, and her two daughters, my mom and my aunt both sang in it. The rest of my family, uncles, cousins sat every Sunday out front and watched. My earliest memories are tied to that old Church in paramount. I remember seeing a gold shovel going into the ground and people praying about it and thinking, wow, something big was going to go here, and I watched my father and the rest of the men build it from the ground up. I was probably 4 years old and seemed to be always in the way. I wanted to help. I wanted to be in on the action. One of the men snapped down a red line where the choir would be standing one day a
It wasn't as big as this. My grandmother played the piano, and she led the choir, and her two daughters, my mom and my aunt both sang in it. The rest of my family, uncles, cousins sat every Sunday out front and watched. My earliest memories are tied to that old Church in paramount. I remember seeing a gold shovel going into the ground and people praying about it and thinking, wow, something big was going to go here, and I watched my father and the rest of the men build it from the ground up. I was probably 4 years old and seemed to be always in the way. I wanted to help. I wanted to be in on the action. One of the men snapped down a red line where the choir would be standing one day a
and said, "have at it", as many nails as you want all in this line. I always took great comfort in watching my mom and aunt sing knowing that they would never fall through that floor where I had worked. The Church was the center of our social life and Whitney and I would laugh knowing it was also the place where we could really get into big trouble especially when you were allowed to sit with your friends and not your parents in the big Church. I remember more than once being pulled from the pew for whispering and passing notes. I don't believe my feet ever hit the floor as my father hauled me outside in front of everyone. I believed even the preacher prayed for me. Whitney's favorite story of mine was me sneaking into the Church kitchen after communion. I liked the little glasses of grape juice that were left over. I liked how they felt in my hand. I couldn't have been over 6 at the time, but I would lean against the table and one by one I would knock them back. Having some image near conversation with someone my father would find me and ask me what I was doing. I told him I was a cowboy and I was drinking whiskey. I don't think my feet touched the floor that day either.
It was easy for us to laugh. The Church was what we knew. It was our private bond. I can see her in my own mind running around here as a skinny little girl knowing everyone, everyone's business, knowing every inch of this place. I can also see her in trouble, too. Trying to use that beautiful smile, trying to talk her way out of it and Cissy not having any of it. Mostly the days of Church were good ones for us and we both remembered how our parents tried to explain God and the plan he had for our lives and we agreed that there was this feeling, this promise that if somehow we listened carefully God's voice would somehow come to us. I told Whitney that I always worried God was going to ask me to be a Preacher. I wasn't sure how much fun ours had. Whitney told me she wasn't worried at all. She wasn't going to wait for a whisper. She was going to be like her cousin Dionne and her beautiful mother Cissy. There is no doubt that she has joined their ranks and as the debate heats up this century and it surely will, about the greatest singer of the last century, as the lists are drawn, they will have little meaning to me if her name is not on it.
