Cissy Houston, who passed away Monday, Oct. 7 at the age of 91, attained the heights of music stardom as a solo star and backup singer for Elvis Presley.
But few have been so intimate with public tragedy as the Newark native. Her daughter Whitney Houston’s life ended heartbreakingly short when she was found dead at 48 in a hotel bathtub on Feb. 11, 2012, in Beverly Hills, California, on the eve of that year’s Grammy Awards.
Three years later, Bobbi Kristina Brown, Cissy’s granddaughter, died at 22 in an Atlanta-area hospice nearly six months after she was found in her Georgia home, also unresponsive in a bathtub.
“The devil has a way of sneaking into your life, and sometimes you don’t recognize it,” said Houston to the Asbury Park Press in 2013. “Our children today who are growing up, they don’t pay attention like I was taught to pay attention to each and every thing. Back then, I was older and it was a different era, a different time, and this era is horrible.”
Houston died Monday morning at her New Jersey home while under hospice care for Alzheimer’s disease. Houston’s daughter-in-law, Pat Houston, confirmed in a statement to USA Today via Gwendolyn Quinn, a representative for Whitney Houston’s estate.