(Photo courtesy of Laurie Badami)
Our family friend Laurie snapped this precious picture of Nippy and Krissi napping.
(Photo courtesy of Laurie Badami)
She’s a little fussy in this picture, but Krissi really was a sweet baby.
This shot by Ellin LaVar shows Krissi all ready for the sun in her floppy hat and bathing suit.
Here I am with Blaire, my son Michael’s daughter. Of all my grandchildren, I think she’s the one who looks most like me.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
In 1997, Nippy spoke at the dedication ceremony when her elementary school was renamed the Whitney E. Houston Academy for Creative and Performing Arts. She’d come a long way from being that skinny little girl with the big voice in East Orange.
Bobby, Nippy, and Krissi at their home in Mendham, New Jersey.
Nippy was blessed with such an amazing voice. I used to say to her, “God was good to you, baby.” For all she went through, I wouldn’t be surprised if sometimes she wished otherwise.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
Back when Nippy was a girl and would sing in church, I’d tell her, “Bring them to their feet, baby, and then drop them to their knees.” And Lord, she could do it.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
Once, when Nippy was touring in Germany, crowds had blocked all the roads to get to her concert—so she and Krissi ended up having to take a helicopter to bypass them.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
Not every three-year-old gets a chance to have a private helicopter ride, but I’m not sure Krissi was old enough to appreciate it.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
Krissi poses with her dog Doogie before an awards show.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
Nippy and her brother Gary onstage.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
Another show, another dressing room. Nippy always took her work seriously, even when the pressures of touring started to wear on her.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
I’m grateful that Nippy was able to leave her mark on the world, but I would trade it all just to have my baby back.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
The long tours took a toll on her voice, but for years Nippy delivered electrifying performances.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
Krissi joins Nippy onstage. Nippy also loved to bring Bobby out onstage to dance, too.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
I love this family picture, taken in Monte Carlo during Nippy’s 1998 European tour. Left to right: front row, Krissi, Michael’s wife, Donna, Nippy; middle row, Blaire, Toni Chambers, Bae White; back row, Laurie Badami, Robyn Crawford. In the pool, acting up: Gary.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
Krissi in her Sunday best.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
I’ve been recording in studios since the late 1950s, and I’ve never gotten tired of it.
Directing singers in the studio.
In the 1990s, I was fortunate enough to win two Grammys for Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album—for Face to Face and He Leadeth Me.
From working as New Hope Baptist Church’s minister of music to directing background arrangements, I’ve always loved working with other singers.
I learned from my father that in singing gospel, you inspire others and strengthen your own faith. Singing with me in the backup choir are Gary (fifth from right) and his wife, Pat (third from right).
Nippy loved working on her collaboration with Kelly Price (left) and Faith Evans (right), “It’s Not Right but It’s Okay.”
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
Sometimes, before going out onstage, Nippy would say, “Okay, I’ve got to go be Whitney Houston now.”
(Photo courtesy of Laurie Badami)
Nippy was surrounded by people who worked very hard for her, including these talented backup dancers.
(Photo courtesy of Laurie Badami)
By the time this video was shot in the late 1990s, rumors had started to circulate about what was really going on with Nippy. But she still went out and did her job every day.
(Photo courtesy of Laurie Badami)
Reverend Joe Carter, my pastor at New Hope Baptist Church, helped me celebrate at my seventieth birthday party.
Dancing with Gary, my firstborn.
My sons Gary (left) and Michael (right). From the time Nippy was small, her brothers looked out for her.
Sometimes I just ache, wishing I could hug my Nippy one last time. I never, ever thought she would go before me.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
Nippy, I will always love you.
(Photo courtesy of Ellin LaVar)
Part Three
CHAPTER 15
Atlanta
John had managed to shock me pretty good a few times over the years, from filing for divorce to secretly marrying Peggy. But in August 2002, he shocked the hell out of not just me but everybody else, too, when his company, John Houston Entertainment, filed a lawsuit against Nippy—for $100 million.
The suit accused Nippy of not paying what she owed for management services. Now, before John had his own company, he had been CEO of Nippy’s company, and I can guarantee you that she paid him fairly—and then some—for his work. Even after he retired, Nippy always made sure he was taken care of. So, the idea that he would sue her for not paying him was far beyond any kind of rationality. And it hurt Nippy very badly, at a time when she needed his support more than anything.
I had been angry with John many times, but never as angry as when I heard about this lawsuit. I could get over him hurting me, but hurting our kids was different. I just couldn’t understand how anyone in his right mind could possibly believe that Nippy would try to cheat her father.
That’s when I realized that maybe John wasn’t in his right mind, after all. You know, he was in his eighties and I thought maybe he was a little bit senile at this point. And he had a young guy working with him, someone named Kevin Skinner, who must have persuaded him to do something this dumb. Skinner apparently told everyone who would listen that the suit was coming from both him and John, but I don’t believe it. I have to believe he talked John into it. And it’s a damn shame, because it really upset Nippy. She felt betrayed; she couldn’t believe that her father, her beloved Daddy, had done this.
The whole thing was made more difficult by the fact that John’s health was poor. He was still plagued by diabetes and heart problems and all the complications those bring, and not long after that suit was filed he was rushed to the hospital. Kevin Skinner actually came to his hospital bed and apparently convinced John to say some kind of mess about Nippy on TV. Michael was so angry after that, he hired a guard to stand watch at the door of John’s hospital room.
No matter what happened in her life, Nippy had always known she could count on her family. She and Michael were as close as twins, talking late into the night whenever Nippy couldn’t sleep. She was also close to Gary and his wife, Pat, who had begun to travel with her. And although she didn’t do it as often as I would have liked, Nippy knew she could call me if she needed anything. Up until that lawsuit, she had counted on her daddy, too. But now, in what turned out to be the twilight of his life, he’d done this stupid thing to push her away. It was the same kind of thing he’d done with me, all those years ago, after his heart attack. Back then, he felt vulnerable and sick and blamed me for his troubles. And now he was blaming Nippy.
Nippy was struggling, and at this point Bobby was in trouble with the law about every other minute or so. He was getting himself arrested all over the place, from DUIs to assaults and everything in between. He just could not stay out of trouble, and he and Nippy both were still doing drugs. If anyone wasn�
�t sure about that, Nippy made it plain enough in the interview she did with Diane Sawyer at the end of 2002.
The interview was supposed to kick off a “comeback” for Nippy after the difficulties of the last couple of years. But all anybody would remember from it was Nippy saying, “Crack is whack.” I hated that whole interview, and while I know it wasn’t Diane’s fault, it was obvious that Nippy wasn’t ready for prime time, you know? I heard from others who were there that Diane tried her best to help Nippy out, but the result was still a train wreck.
And of course, Bobby was hovering around through the whole thing, so much that Diane finally told him to just come on in and talk to her, too. The whole thing was uncomfortable to look at, though in truth I can’t blame that on Bobby or Diane or anybody else. Nippy was a grown woman, and she made her own choice to do it.
Nippy said it best herself when Diane asked her what her biggest devil was. She said, “That would be me. . . . Nobody makes me do anything I don’t want to do. It’s my decision. So the biggest devil is me. I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy.”
Just six months after he filed that lawsuit against Nippy, John Houston died at the age of eighty-two. The lawsuit was still pending, and he and Nippy never did get a chance to reconcile over that. Despite all that, she was still very sad, remembering all the good times and love and laughter she had shared with her father over the years, rather than the strange goings-on of his final year.
I was sad, too, but mostly for Michael, Gary, and Nippy. I never stopped loving John, but we had been divorced for so long, and so many things had happened between us, that I really didn’t grieve all that much when he passed. In fact, I probably wouldn’t even have gone to the funeral except that Nippy and Bae insisted. I decided to go for my children’s sake.
The day before the funeral, I went to the wake with Nippy, Gary, and Michael and their families. Gary’s wife, Pat, was working for Nippy at this point, and Nippy told her, “Take care of whatever they need”—meaning, she wanted to give Peggy some money toward funeral expenses and whatever else they needed. Nippy didn’t have any kind of relationship with Peggy—none of us did—but she offered that assistance out of respect for her father. Lawsuit or no lawsuit, Nippy was generous to her daddy right to the very end.
But at the wake, Peggy’s daughter Alana kept talking about “my daddy” this and “my daddy” that. And for Nippy, that was just too much. That was really hard to hear, especially now with everything that had gone on. Though she didn’t know Alana and didn’t have anything against her, she had really never come to terms with her father’s adoption of her. So even though she went to the wake, Nippy decided she wasn’t going to the funeral the next day. She was hurting; she felt like she had done what she could do out of love and respect for her father, but she just couldn’t do any more.
On the day of John’s funeral, there was a terrible snowstorm in New Jersey. I really didn’t want to go, but I’d told Michael and Gary I would, so I did. John’s first wife was there, too, and she sat in the back and just cried through the whole thing. Somehow, I didn’t shed a tear, and I was a little surprised at that, since John had been the love of my life. I’m sure if he and I had been on better terms when he died, I would have cried—a lot.
When he died, though, it was one of the few times that I felt more angry at him than close to him. At that point, I really hadn’t been speaking to him, because of the lawsuit against Nippy. This was very unusual, because no matter what was going on in our lives, even after separation, divorce, and everything else, John and I always had stayed bonded together. He was always there for me, and I was always there for him.
I remember one time, just a couple of years before he died, when he was suffering terribly from the effects of his diabetes. He and I were both at a fund-raising event honoring Nippy, and when John came into the room he could hardly walk, even with his cane.
He was in worse shape than I’d seen in a while—in too much pain even to be a smartass, so it had to be bad. I said, “John, what is wrong with you?” He just said, “Cissy, I can’t make it to the table. My legs are hurting so bad.” And you know, I’d suffered through a shattered ankle and knee replacement surgery, but at that point I was doing better than he was. So I just looked at him and said, “Well, come on, then. Lean on me, I’ll get you there.” John put his arm around me, and together we limped on over to the table. I don’t know where his wife was, and I didn’t care. Whenever John needed my help, I helped him.
That was the kind of relationship we always had, no matter what—we were there for each other. If we had been close when he passed, if he hadn’t filed that lawsuit, it would not have been easy for me at all. And strangely enough, I think John knew that. He was just crazy enough, and just enough of a controlling person, to have orchestrated everything that way, to have me mad at him at the very end. Almost like a blessing in disguise.
Back in 1982, when John left our house on Dodd Street, Nippy left very soon afterward, moving to Woodbridge with Robyn Crawford. Now, more than twenty years later, something similar was happening. Because just months after John passed away, Nippy left New Jersey, where she’d spent her whole life, and moved down to Atlanta with Bobby.
Even though I hadn’t been seeing Nippy all that much, I always took comfort in knowing she was just right up the road. But now she was moving so much farther away, to a place where she really could just disappear if she wanted to. I took some solace in the fact that Gary and Pat were also moving to Atlanta to be near Nippy, but regardless, I knew I’d probably be seeing her even less now.
Nippy bought a house on Tullamore Place, in Alpharetta, Georgia. It was a big house, with five bedrooms and seven bathrooms, and there were lots of trees and room to wander around outside. There was also a gate surrounding the place, so she could have her privacy, which probably meant more to her by now than anything else a house could offer. At Tullamore, Nippy knew she could control who saw her, and when.
And that’s when she really started putting up the walls. When she was in New Jersey, we used to talk on the phone a lot, but once she got to Atlanta, she stopped calling me so much. And she never seemed to have any time to visit with me, even if I could make it down there. She’d just say, “Oh, I’m so busy, Mommy!” and tell me about this reason and that reason why she couldn’t see me. I did talk to Gary and Pat, and Aunt Bae was living down there with Nippy for a while, so she’d tell me things. But mostly I had no idea what my daughter’s life was like after she moved to Atlanta.
It was Bobby’s idea to move, but I think that, by then, Nippy didn’t want to be around me or anybody else who was going to hold her accountable. I think she wanted to be free of her responsibilities and obligations, and far enough away from anyone, especially me, who would call her on her behavior. She and I never had a big falling-out or blowup, but she wanted to increase even more the distance—both physical and emotional—that had been growing between us. She knew I was worried about her, and she knew that if I believed she needed me, I was just going to show up. Between seeing her high at her house in Mendham and hearing what she said to Diane Sawyer, it was now more apparent than ever that Nippy needed help. And she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to let me or anybody else down, so she put herself in a situation where she could control who saw her. I think she believed she could control everything else in her life, too, but she couldn’t. Nippy didn’t mean for things to get out of hand down there, but they did. Very quickly.
Pat and Gary knew she was in trouble, and they tried to help in their own way. They took Nippy and Bobby to Israel not long after they moved to Atlanta, I believe as a way to help them use faith to stop drugging so much. They met with a group there called the Black Hebrew Israelites, and although I appreciated Pat’s efforts, I didn’t really want to know about all that. I’m a firm believer in Jesus Christ, and Nippy had been raised in the church, and I hoped she could overcome her problems that way. And any
way, whatever happened over in Israel, things were as bad as ever when Nippy and Bobby came back home.
At the end of 2003, Nippy made a 911 call. She started to say that her husband had done something, but when the dispatcher asked for her name, she hung up. The dispatcher called back, but Nippy didn’t want to make any kind of report. The police traced the call, but by the time they arrived Bobby had left the house. She never told me what happened, of course, and to this day I don’t know, but the police did charge him with domestic battery.
I was as worried about her as ever, and I wished she didn’t want to stay with him so badly. I was loyal to John when he was my husband, but I can guarantee you if he’d ever laid a hand on me, that would have been the end of it. But Nippy not only stayed with Bobby, she also came to court to support him when he went up on charges of domestic battery. He kept saying how they’d just had a “little spat,” and acted like they were only playing around. And Nippy stood there by him, protecting him as she always did.
A lot of people wondered why she stayed with him. One reason was simple—she had married him, and he was her husband, and that was that. And I think she also wanted to prove people wrong. If everyone in the world said that she and Bobby would never last, well—she’d do everything she could to prove they didn’t know what they were talking about. If Nippy was anything, she was stubborn. And she was proud.
But the other reason was, she really did love Bobby. And he knew how to make that work for him. I’ll say this much, they could push each other’s buttons, and I believe that there were times when he was emotionally abusive toward her, but he knew exactly how to bring her back whenever he had just acted like a jackass.
Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped Page 18