Aretha’s fans say bye, with tears, dance moves
Detroit — two decades ago, after Rhonda Jefferson had suffered another broken rib at the hands of an abusive boyfriend, her friends told her that she needed to leave him. But she could not quite find the strength, she said on Tuesday, until Aretha Franklin gave it to her.
Jefferson remembers lying in bed, listening to music, when her CD began to skip and repeat one particularly famous Franklin refrain: “R-ES-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.”
Jefferson said she took that as “a sign from a goddess” and left her abuser for good that day, which explains why she and her daughter drove all night from Philadelphia to join the thousands who came to view Franklin as she lay in state at the Charles H Wright Museum of African American History here.
The adoring public came from far and wide to glimpse Franklin, resplendent in a red gown and red pumps and with cherry red lipstick on a placid smile, lying in a gold coffin surrounded by flowers.
At one point in the morning, the line of visitors waiting to enter the first of two 12-hour viewing periods on Tuesday and Wednesday stretched for five blocks. Franklin was only the third person to lay in state at the Wright Museum, the other two being the rights pioneer Rosa Parks and Detroit’s first AfricanAmerican mayor, Coleman Young Jr., said George Hamilton, the museum’s interim executive director.
On Friday there will be an invitation-only funeral at Detroit’s Greater Grace Temple for Franklin, who died August 16 at the age of 76. But the viewings on Tuesday and Wednesday were for her fans who started lining up late Monday. Camille Howard, 46, a human resources executive from Austin, Texas, flew up and was in line by 10pm, spending the night bonding and praying with other Franklin devotees. “I knew that it would be crowded, I knew that the world was going to want to come and see her for the last time It’s a celebration of her life,” Howard said.
THE NEW YORK TIMES