Magical really is the right word. I graduated from high school in 1988, so Whitney was a big singer in my high school years.

Now, you guys are going to think me whacked, but this is no bullshit.

I took at nap between 6:30 - 7:00pm tonight. During that nap I had a dream about Whitney. Well, really, it was a dream about a high school friend who I haven't thought about in a long time who was a huge fan of hers. The dream/ensuing wakeful thinking, was about my friend and her attachment to Whitney. I mean, I can't even tell you the last time I thought about Whitney Houston.

An hour after I wake up I read about this. How weird is that?

Well, I'm weird, too, then :(. For some reason, I was just belting out "Wanna Dance With Someone" yesterday in the car, and hoping she would get back on track and make a comeback. It's been years since I heard one of her songs. I read she even had some work coming up and was clean.

I'm more torn up over this than losing the wreck that Michael Jackson had become.

talent, just natural born talent. she was put on this earth to sing. and sing she did. i sure am sorry to hear this.

walking thru the house about a week ago, i over heard the tv ... talking about her addiction. she lived on the edge.

may you rest in peace, whitney houston.

I just can't believe it, I'm shocked.

I just heard about Whiyney on Tv. I can't believe it. Her music was such a part of my life especially in the eighties. What a voice. She was a master! I was really hoping that she would soon come back better than she had been for quite awhile. Such a loss.

Sad Sad day for the music world...Whitney was a great performer and an awesome singer....R.I.P. Whitney :vigil:

I cant' believe the media makes us watch a 30 second bank commercial to listen to her sing the national anthem. I so *(*** sick of corporate commercial CADFADFDSDSSDf I could puke. God Bless you Whitney.

** sings I will always love you ** rip whitney

Tragic indeed...in life and in death...

It's a very sad loss, but I hope her life lessons will be absorbed by the up and coming artists, RIP Whitney, few have ever been able to carry a note like you.

Such a tragic loss. I had the honor of seeing and meeting her when I was a little girl while my dad was working on a production. The strength of her voice and her energy I will NEVER forgot. RIP Whitney...

May she rest in peace. Certainly one of the best. I am not trying to be disrespectful in any way here. Do any of you remember before she married Bobby Brown all the rumors that she was a lesbian? She had the "friend" that was I believe a friend of her childhood. The friend played basketball and was her constant companion. I wonder where this woman is tonight.

My condolances to Whitney's daughter, mother, her ex-husband, her entire family and all of the people, fans who loved her.

Whitney
 

There was a time when I was able to walk long distances. I chose to walk in a local cemetery. It was peaceful and serene albeit for a male in his 30's who obviously lost his wife at a young age. He had his car door open and blasting out of the speakers was Whitney's song I will Always Love You. It was hard to hear the song over this young man's wailing. In watching the tributes of Whitney last night and hearing that song it brought me back to a young man's lost. I wonder what he is feeling today as we all try to deal with this tragic lost.

Whitney Houston had an amazing range and depth in voice- one of the greatest we will ever know. Her ability to change keys in the middle of a song like it was routine was a vocal talent few have ever had.

Of course there is a lot of speculation about her death. We will have to wait for causation. Something on my mind is that due to her longterm coke use, her heart could have very well been damaged and it might end up she died of heart failure without any drugs in her system. I fear suicide as well because she was struggling so much with her music career comeback and dif lose some of her voice range. And her being an abused woman that obviously had poor self-esteem. yes, even someone as beautiful and talented as her can have low self-esteem- happens all of the time. Also, I hope to hell that she did not have one of the Hollywood docs to the stars that scripted her narcotics for sleep, etc. and her death was due to prescription drug abuse along with alcohol. Thinking about Heath Ledger and MJ (others) here.

She struggled so much with getting clean & sober and being able to remain so. It is like this for some addicts especially if they never get to the emotional components of their addiction. And like so many stars, she could never get away from the media when in crisis.

I feel really sad about this because it might be a story we have heard far too often about the deaths of music icons that have brought something extraordinary to their art. My heart goes out to her family and especially her young daughter.

I hope people see beyond the addiction and poor choices in her life plus just plain being fragile at certain points and see that she was simply human dealing with things that for most people are not judged continually in the public eye.

Robin Crawford.

The link you posted doesn't work and I have not found any credible news sources reporting this.

nice, my apologies

i feel bad enough lol so i deleted them luckily i could do that. i have searched all over. i will watch and read before posting a death

Thank you. Due diligence is important when posting any such news.

I was and am inspired by this woman's life and work.

(I'm really bad at this, so this link may or may not work.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us...nt&tntemail1=y

Patricia Stephens Due Dies at 72; Campaigned for Civil Rights

Frank Noel, courtesy of the State Archives of Florida
Patricia Stephens Due, center, in a protest at a segregated theater in 1963 in Tallahassee, Fla.
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: February 11, 2012
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Patricia Stephens Due, whose belief that, as she put it, “ordinary people can do extraordinary things” propelled her to leadership in the civil rights movement — but at a price, including 49 days in a stark Florida jail — died on Tuesday in Smyrna, Ga. She was 72.

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The cause was thyroid cancer, her daughter Johnita Due said. She had moved to Smyrna, an Atlanta suburb, to be near her family after living in Miami.

At 13, Patricia Stephens challenged Jim Crow orthodoxy by trying to use the “whites only” window at a Dairy Queen. As a college student, she led demonstrations to integrate lunch counters, theaters and swimming pools and was repeatedly arrested.

As a young mother, she pushed two children in a stroller while campaigning for the rights of poor people. As a veteran of integration and voting rights battles, she went on to fight for economic rights, once obstructing a garbage truck in support of striking workers. As an elder stateswoman of the movement, she wrote a memoir to honor “unsung foot soldiers.”

She fought beside John D. Due Jr., a civil rights lawyer, whom she married in 1963. For their honeymoon, they rode the Freedom Train to Washington to hear the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. give his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Mrs. Due paid a price for this devotion. She wore large, dark glasses day and night because her eyes were damaged when a hissing tear gas canister hit her in the face. She took a decade to graduate from Florida A&M University because of suspensions for her activism.

Her F.B.I. file ran more than 400 pages. Her stepfather urged her to give up civil rights, to protect her and his own job. She was kicked and threatened with dogs, including a German shepherd whose police handlers gave it a racial slur for a name.

Mrs. Due’s greatest prominence came after she and 10 other students were arrested for sitting at the “whites only” lunch counter at a Woolworth’s store in Tallahassee, Fla., on Feb. 20, 1960. It was 19 days after four black students in Greensboro, N.C., had made civil rights history by doing the same thing.

Mrs. Due and seven others refused to pay $300 fines for violating laws they abhorred. Five served the full 49-day sentence.

As leader of the sit-in, Mrs. Due became a national figure. Jackie Robinson sent her a diary for her jail-time thoughts. James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte and Eleanor Roosevelt endorsed her efforts. Dr. King sent a telegram saying, “Going to jail for a righteous cause is a badge of honor and a symbol of dignity.”

It was not easy behind bars. She and her sister, Priscilla Stephens Kruize, her compatriot in many battles, had to share a narrow bed. They suspected that a mentally disturbed woman was placed in the cell to unnerve them. Food was awful; nights were cold.

Thurgood Marshall, head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, questioned whether it was all worth it, given the deplorable state of Southern jails. But the drama of righteous incarceration seized the nation’s attention, a freed Mrs. Due went on a national fund-raising tour and the “jail-in” became a movement standard.

Patricia Gloria Stephens was born on Dec. 9, 1939, in Quincy, Fla., and was raised in Belle Glade, Fla. As high school students, she and Priscilla, who was 15 months older, started a petition to have the principal removed, The Miami Herald reported in 1990. Patricia said the two were “always testing things.”

In 1959, she formed a local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality. It was the beginning of life as “a professional volunteer,” in her daughter’s words. She worked with youths, helped out in political campaigns and spoke on human rights issues. In the last year of her life, state, county and local governments in Florida honored her.

In addition to her husband of 49 years, her sister and her daughter, Mrs. Due is survived by two other daughters, Tananarive Due and Lydia Due Greisz; a brother, Walter Stephens; and five grandchildren.

In 2003, Mrs. Due and her daughter Tananarive, a novelist, wrote “Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.” The book discusses thorny issues like black people’s ambivalence about the civil rights struggle in the movement’s early days and the emotional turmoil of children whose parents are activists. It also contains many tales of courage.

“Stories live forever,” Mrs. Due liked to say. “Storytellers don’t.”

Miss Whitney Houston dies at 48


Miss Houston, May you sore free now and your transendance be beautiful and all you ever imagined and then some!
Thank you not only for your voice but also for being such a powerful role model with domestic abuse.
You helped many see it was possible to get out and leave.

You will be seriously missed by many, myself most definately included.

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment...on-dies-at-48/


.

Oh, sure, everyone cares about Whitney Houston dying, but what about the 86 Syrians who lost their lives today? Is it because they're white??

Are you serious?? Do you realize how racist this post is?? Your post was so wrong and offensive on may levels. We have all posted out of emotion, but sometimes you have to think about how what you say will hurt others.

I've never reported a post before. This one is beyond the pale.

The fact that none of you get it, is beyond the pale.

What the hell, dude? If this is a joke, it is a poor one. Really, guy. This is the RIP thread for the death of well known figures.

I "get it", I just don't find it humorous.

Well, let me hear how you explain it.

Here's what I have to say after hearing various reactions, and I'll stand by it:

I'm truly sorry that some are offended, but when I think of a line like that that exposes and challenges the dominant paradigm in our society, I can't concern myself with who won't get it. There will always be those who don't. I still have to just grit my teeth and post it. Believe me: If you got the joke, you'd love it.

Tapu you aren't challenging any paradigms. You're racist.