A private memorial service will be held this Saturday, June 7, at Wake Forest University for late poet and literary icon Dr. Maya Angelou, and while it’s hard to imagine who could deliver words to do her rich life justice, according to reports, her good friend Oprah Winfrey is one of the people who will do the honors.
MUST WATCH: Stream Maya Angelou’s Memorial Service
Angelou died last Wednesday , May 28, at her home in Winston-Salem, N.C. and Oprah has been remembering her ever since. “I’ve been blessed to have Maya Angelou as my mentor, mother/sister, and friend since my 20’s,” Winfrey wrote in a Facebook post the day Angelou died. “She was there for me always, guiding me through some of the most important years of my life. The world knows her as a poet but at the heart of her, she was a teacher. ‘When you learn, teach. When you get, give’ is one of my best lessons from her.”
What will the media mogul say at the services to remember her phenomenal friend? “I don’t know what I will say, but it will just come,” Oprah told Entertainment Tonight in an interview where she also recalled the last conversation they had. During that last conversation, Winfrey says that the late poet was proud of her role in the upcoming Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic, “Selma.” “She said, ‘Take it, baby. Take it all the way,’ because said was a part of the movement,” Oprah said, nodding to Angelou’s Civil Rights activism.
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In addition to Oprah, First Lady Michelle Obama will reportedly speak at the memorial services which is being called “a celebration of rising ‘joy’.” Angelou’s family plans on having more activities in her honor in other states across the country that her son Guy B. Johnson, will release more information about in the days to come. Due to limited seating capacity at Wake Forest University’s Wait Chapel, the family has decided to have a closed service for family and friends only, but the service will be live streamed at go.wfu.edu/angeloumemorial.
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