Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped

by Houston, Cissy

  But Nippy was generous enough to buy a place for me, too—a nice, sunny condo in Verona, New Jersey. John and I sold the Dodd Street house, which was just too big and inconvenient for me to keep up. John still lived in Newark, in a place of his own, but we kept on seeing each other. It didn’t even feel like we were separated, except for the fact that we weren’t living together. But I really hoped and believed that he and I would end up back together. I expected it to happen—the only question was when.

  Nippy’s “Moment of Truth” tour began on the Fourth of July 1987, and over the next sixteen months, she went absolutely all over the place—North America, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia. I couldn’t come with her for most of the tour, as I was still working—doing backup for singers such as David Bowie, and doing my regular gigs at Sweetwaters and Fat Tuesday’s. But although I only managed to see a few of her shows, I’d always call to check in on things and see how she was doing.

  I knew Nippy was in good hands on this tour—Gary, Michael, and John all went with her, as did Aunt Bae. Michael was assistant road manager, Gary was singing background, and Bae was the “road mommy,” there to look out for everybody. And John was traveling as the CEO of Nippy’s new company, Nippy Inc., which she had formed to replace her old management agency.

  Gary, Michael, and Nippy were still young, all of them in their twenties, and although they were working, they wanted to have fun, too. They had money and time, so they did some silly kid stuff, like turning a parking lot into a skating rink for a night. But Aunt Bae and John never let them get too far out of line. And Bae would cook for them whenever a hotel allowed her to use their kitchen. So even in France or Japan, they could have their favorite home-cooked meal—chicken wings and pork and beans.

  Michael and Nippy were particularly close, and she loved having him with her on tour. She’d make him take a hotel room just across the hall from hers and leave the latch open, so she could wander over in the middle of the night if she felt like it. They’d lie around in his room and watch QVC, ordering things off the TV late at night when she couldn’t sleep.

  Nippy was younger than Michael, but she liked calling him “son”—as in, the prodigal son. Later on, Michael would tell me about some of the mess they got themselves into, such as the time Nippy decided she wanted to walk down Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Without security. In a fur coat. She just thought it would be fun, so Michael followed her out, and the two of them wandered around the French Quarter, trailing a crowd of excited, drunk tourists behind them.

  Nippy didn’t seem to realize that it might not be safe for her to just wander out into crowds. She was famous everywhere by now, but if she got it in her head to go have a stroll somewhere, she’d do it. Sometimes she just didn’t feel like facing the realities of the situation.

  Michael told me about another time in Italy, when he’d been on tour with Nippy for several months. He hadn’t seen his wife, Donna, and youngest son, little Gary, in a while, and he missed them. Or maybe it was just that Nippy missed little Gary—she adored that child, and later she would take him on tour with her, just because she liked having him around. Whatever the case, Nippy decided to fly Donna and little Gary over to Italy for a visit.

  Everybody was staying in a hotel with a big courtyard, where hundreds of people would gather each day hoping to get a glimpse of Nippy. And on the day Donna and Gary were supposed to arrive, the crowd was getting unruly—they’d been out there the whole night before, shouting, “Whitney! Whitney!” so loudly that no one in the hotel could sleep.

  At the time that Michael’s family was scheduled to arrive, Nippy and Michael made their way down to the lobby to greet them. There was security and Italian police everywhere, and the police had already gotten a little rough with the crowd, even arresting some people. They were trying to keep things under control, but it wasn’t easy.

  When the car carrying Donna and little Gary pulled up in front of the hotel, someone shouted, “There they are!”—and before Michael could grab her, Nippy just took off. She bolted from the hotel lobby toward the car, running past the security guards and police, and the crowd started to rush toward her. Michael told me she just started pushing people aside, knocking them left and right until she made it to the car. And then, miraculously, people stood back and left her alone. She grabbed little Gary and carried him in her arms back to the lobby, kissing and hugging him. And thankfully, the crowd let her pass.

  I didn’t like the idea of crowds rushing at Nippy, or of her just wandering into them. But she was just excited to see little Gary, and in the end everybody was safe. Even so, you can bet I gave John a piece of my mind when I heard this story. “You better keep an eye on her!” I told him.

  It didn’t matter where Nippy went now; everybody recognized her and wanted to come up to her. Once, when she and I had just flown back to New York together, we found out that the car that was supposed to pick her up had gone to the wrong airport. We had no car, no driver, no security—and it was a summer Friday, so JFK airport was jammed with all kinds of people trying to get taxicabs. Nippy’s attorney and friend Toni Chambers was with us, too, and while Toni was on the phone trying to get a limo, people started circling.

  There was no way we could stand there and wait—Nippy was about to be swarmed. So we picked up our bags and hurried out toward the taxi area, and a man walked up and said, “You need a car?” He seemed to be the only person in the airport who had no idea who Nippy was, so we just looked at each other and Nippy started laughing. “Yes we do!” she said. “Let’s go!” We followed the man through the crowds, past the taxi stand, and into the parking lot. And there was his car, a beat-up Toyota something or other with primer on the doors. We threw our bags into his trunk and piled in.

  As we rode off down the highway in that ratty old Toyota, Nippy seemed to love it. She cranked down the window and stuck her head out, enjoying the fact that, just for a moment, she could be plain old Nippy rather than the famous Whitney Houston. When we rolled up to a stoplight, a couple of girls were sitting in the car next to us. One of them shrieked, “That’s Whitney Houston!” And the other said, “Don’t be stupid! Whitney Houston would never be riding in a car like that.”

  No matter how famous she got, Nippy still loved the same old simple things she always had. She loved Creamsicles, and if someone tried to bring her some kind of fancy sorbet with fruit, she’d say, “No! I just want a Creamsicle!” People would walk by this beautiful woman in jeans and a jacket, eating a Creamsicle, and think, “She looks just like Whitney Houston!”

  Nippy always wanted to be just one of the girls, but it got harder the more famous she became. After a while, she started separating out her public self from her private one. She’d say, “I’m tired, it’s time for me to put Nippy to bed.” Or, when she had to perform, she’d say, “Okay, it’s time for me to go be Whitney Houston.” It was just one of the ways she dealt with the craziness of fame.

  Being a performer on the road is not easy. You have to know what you’re out there for, the reason why you’re doing it. A lot of people get lost in the whirlwind, and get wrapped up in people who aren’t good for them. You have to carefully choose the kind of company you keep, because it can get wild out there on the road, and it’s easy to get caught up in it.

  I know, because I saw a little bit of everything when I was on the road all those years. I always tried to keep my head about me, because I was aware of having three kids and wanting to be an example for them. Not that I was a goody-two-shoes, because I wasn’t. But I tried to keep things under control, which was sometimes easier said than done. Now, with Nippy spending so much time on the road, and only sharing pieces of it with me, I didn’t have the full picture of how she was handling it all. Pretty soon, I got a hint from someone I didn’t expect—Robyn Crawford.

  One afternoon in the late 1980s, Robyn came to visit me. I was surprised, since she and I never said much to each other, and I al
ways tried to stay out of whatever was going on between her and my daughter. But Robyn came to me because she was worried about Nippy. She told me that Nippy was using drugs, which was news to me—I had no idea about anything like that. Robyn said that both she and Nippy were doing it on occasion, but that “Nippy likes it a little too much.” Apparently, if they had it in the house, Robyn could do some and stop. But Nippy would keep on doing it until everything was gone.

  Now, I might not have liked certain things about Robyn, but I will say this: She cared a great deal for Nippy, and she wanted to protect her. Nobody had the courage to come tell me that Nippy was getting into something that was bad for her—nobody except Robyn. She didn’t have any kind of relationship with me, but she still came to me in person to try to help Nippy. I always respected Robyn for that.

  After that conversation with Robyn, I asked Nippy about using drugs. “Oh, Mommy,” she said, “you don’t need to worry about any of that.” She just brushed off my concerns, saying she was fine and that Robyn was overreacting. Much as I wanted to press the issue further, I didn’t have much choice but to accept what she was saying—at that point, she was doing everything she was supposed to be doing: touring, recording, making appearances, and everything else. And whenever I talked to her, she seemed to be fine. I didn’t have any proof that anything was wrong, and without proof, I couldn’t push the issue with Nippy, since all she would do is deny it. I had checked in on her and made my concerns known—what else could I do?

  Much later, I would find out that John was worried about Nippy during this time, too. As he watched Nippy’s fame grow, and saw her dealing with all the pressures of touring and being responsible for the livelihoods of dozens, if not hundreds, of people, he began to wonder if she had the strength to handle it all. He knew Gary and Michael were struggling with drug use, too, but as he told one family friend, “You know, the one I’m really worried about is Nippy. If she has to meet some real crisis or disappointment, I’m worried she won’t survive it. Because she’s never had to.”

  And John had a good point. He and I had done such a good job of protecting her that Nippy had never faced any real trauma in her life up to then. Proud as I was of the life we’d given her, with this instant surge of fame she was experiencing, I couldn’t help but worry about what might happen whenever she finally did face some kind of hardship. I just hoped she would come to me if she needed my help.

  But there was one other thing that happened during this time period—one time when Nippy did come to me, and I pushed her away. It’s one of the few moments in my life I truly regret.

  I was scheduled to do a concert in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Nippy had asked if she could come along. She was already a star by this time, but she wanted to come sing background for me, just like we’d done for so many years in the New York clubs. She didn’t want to take over the show or anything—she just wanted to support me up onstage.

  People went crazy, of course, even though she was just backing me up—so when the next song was a gospel number called “Lead Me, Guide Me,” I asked Nippy to step forward and sing the lead. She smiled and did as I asked, and I’m telling you—that whole place just about turned inside out. People were whooping and clapping, and waving their hands around like they were in church. The Spirit was there that night, it really was. This wasn’t the magic of Whitney Houston—it was the magic of a mom and her little girl up onstage, singing the songs of faith we loved.

  The whole evening was so magical that it still pains me to think about what I did that night. Ever since she was a little girl, Nippy sometimes liked to crawl into bed and sleep with me. She did that in our hotel that night, too. But Nippy had developed a terrible habit of grinding her teeth when she slept, and she was doing it so loud that it was keeping me awake. I poked her and said, “Nippy! Go sleep in your own bed!”

  She said, “Mommy, I want to stay here.”

  I said, “No, baby, you’ve got to go, because I can’t get any sleep with that noise!” So, off she went, shuffling out just as sad as could be. I’m sure I hurt her feelings that night, and if I could take it back, I would. But life doesn’t work that way.

  Nippy kept on performing, and as her fame grew she started to try to do some good with it. In the summer of 1988, she sang at a benefit concert at Madison Square Garden that raised a lot of money for the United Negro College Fund. And that June, she performed in London at a big tribute concert for Nelson Mandela’s seventieth birthday.

  Mandela was still imprisoned in South Africa at the time, and apartheid was still in force. South Africa was a touchy subject then, and the organizers of the birthday tribute were having a hard time convincing artists to perform. Nobody wanted to agree to do it until others had agreed to do it first, because everybody seemed scared of some kind of backlash. Nippy didn’t hesitate, though. As soon as the organizers asked her to perform, she said yes. There was nothing that could hold her back from honoring Mandela, whom she admired so much for his courage. She wasn’t afraid, and I was proud of her for that. But it was the following year that she did something that made me even more proud.

  Nippy had always cared about the underdog—about people who didn’t have as much as she did. I saw it when she was a child, when I had to tell her not to give all of her stuff away to the other kids. She just had a very tender heart when it came to people who were less fortunate, so as soon as she started making some real money, she put it to use trying to help others.

  Most of her charitable work and gifts weren’t publicized—that’s the way she wanted it. But she gave of her time and money to organizations like the NAACP, the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes, the United Negro College Fund, the Red Cross, and many more local charities than I could possibly name. Nippy had such a strong conscience that even when she was modeling as a teenager, she refused to work for agencies that did business with South Africa. She understood how fortunate she was, and she felt a duty to give back.

  By the late eighties, she was getting hundreds of requests to do benefit performances. She tried to do as many as she could, but it was just getting out of hand. People didn’t realize that when you do a benefit, even if you donate your services, there are still heavy costs. If Nippy wasn’t on tour, she’d have to bring back the band and the singers for special rehearsals. Professional musicians and background singers get paid for their rehearsal time, of course, and then she’d also have to rent rehearsal space, pay for everybody’s transportation and hotel, per diems, and on and on . . . In the end, it could cost several hundred thousand dollars just to do a single benefit.

  Nippy knew there had to be a better way to put that money to use, so in 1989 she started her own nonprofit—the Whitney Houston Foundation for Children, with a focus on kids who were homeless or had cancer or HIV. She asked if I would serve as president and chairman of the board, and I gladly accepted, and then she hired Toni Chambers as the executive director. She wanted all the money that came in to go straight to the kids, so she underwrote the entire cost of the foundation—all the expenses for salaries, office supplies, and everything else—herself. From day one, Nippy was determined there would never be a question about how money was spent or where donations went. When anybody asked about her foundation, she’d say with pride, “My stuff is taken care of.”

  Nippy’s foundation did amazing work. We organized a Youth Leadership Program in Washington, D.C., for teen-focused nonprofits, from 4H clubs to suicide prevention hotlines. More than a hundred kids came from all over America to D.C. for a week—all kinds of kids, some physically challenged, some confined to wheelchairs, some who were hearing-impaired, black kids, white kids, Asian and Hispanic kids. For that week they were able to meet people they’d never have gotten to meet otherwise, and bond with those who might have shunned them. They taught and learned from each other, and then took some of the ideas they learned back to their own communities. I was so proud of that project, and so proud of my daughte
r and her foundation.

  Nippy worked hard to contribute and do some good in the world, which is one reason it made me angry when people criticized her for stupid things. Some people just want to tear you down if they see you doing well, and people really went after Nippy. And the criticism she got most was all that mess about not being “black enough.”

  Now, all my life, I’ve appreciated good music and tried to make good music. When my generation came of age in the fifties and sixties, we aimed to spread out and be good at whatever we did—not just put ourselves in a little box, the way generations before might have done. And that’s what I tried to teach Nippy. My baby could sing anything—why should she limit herself to a certain type of “approved” music? She sang songs she felt strongly about, and she sang them beautifully. I never could figure out how someone could criticize that. It started at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, but it sure didn’t end there.

  The worst was the night of the 1989 Soul Train Awards. When Nippy was announced as a nominee for Best Female R&B single for “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” a few people started booing, and up in the balcony someone started yelling “White-ey! White-ey!” like it was something clever. This was just a bunch of kids trying to be smart and get everybody’s attention, but it really hurt her feelings—all the more because she didn’t deserve it. Nippy was never trying to be white; she just wanted to sing, to share her God-given talent and be herself. If they didn’t like it that she didn’t take off her clothes and shake her ass and all that mess, well—that was their problem.

  By the end of the night, though, she had won so many awards that she received a standing ovation—a fitting end to what was ultimately a difficult evening. Nippy was strong in some ways, but that same sensitivity to criticism that had bothered her when she was little never went away. This was exactly the kind of thing I had feared back when I told her I didn’t want her going into the music business. I knew that she would suffer, and although I tried to counsel her just to ignore people, or even tell them off, she couldn’t do it. She just got her feelings hurt, as I had known she would. And as her mother, well, I was pissed off.