Remembering pop icon Whitney Houston on the third anniversary of her death and as her daughter Bobbi Kristina clings to life, By Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's leader in Black digital news

Whitney Houston

Houston, a music icon,  in earlier years with her then husband Bobby Brown, whom she married in 1992 and later divorced in 2007. Brown, who rose to moderate and short term fame as member of the R and B group New Edition and subsequent solo artist, had a rocky and sometimes abusive relationship with Houston., though Brown never hesitated to say that he would "always love Whitney."

Bobbi Kristina with her late mother, famed pop singer
Whitney Houston, in happier times and shortly before her
untimely death at 48-year-old

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor, The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog. Com and Cleveland Urban News.Com News.Com (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com) and (www.clevelandurbannews.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Famed pop singer Whitney Houston, the close cousin of music icon Dionne Warwick and ex wife of bad boy former New Edition singer Bobby Brown, died at 48. Her daughter with Brown, Bobbi Kristina Brown, 21, is clinging to life at an Atlanta hospital after Bobbi Kristina's purported husband of nearly a year, Nick Gordon, 30, and a friend, found her unresponsive and face down in a bathtub full of water at their Roswell Georgia home on January 31.

Brown and other family members are at Bobbi Kristina's bedside, praying for a miracle, and hoping that fate will swing in her favor. 

Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's leader in Black digital news, remembers Whitney Houston on today, February 11, the third anniversary of her death. (The Whitney Houston Story)

Whitney Houston was found dead by her entourage in the bathtub of the California Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on February 11, 2012.

The official coroner's report list the singer's death as "drowning and the effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use."

At the time of her death, the former superstar was in town for a pre Grammy Awards party at the Beverly Hilton thrown by record producer and music industry executive Clive Davis, her longtime mentor who discovered her talent, nurtured it, and molded her into a star. She was remembered during a special segment sung by Jennifer Hudson at the 2012 Grammy Awards.

Also an actress and producer who starred opposite Denzel Washington in the movie "The Preacher's Wife," opposite Kevin Cosner in the hit motion picture "The Body Guard," and opposite actresses Loretta Devine and Angela Bassett in the popular women's liberating film "Waiting To Exhale," Houston rose to fame in 1985 with the Grammy winning "Saving All My Love For You." The love song was among cuts on the multi-platinum album "Whitney Houston, which had a string of other billboard hits like "You Give Good Love" and "The Greatest Love of All," a remake of the George Benson hit.

Houston won six Grammys, 30 NAACP image awards, an Emmy, and a host of other awards and commendations. Probably the song most memorable that she brought her fans is "I Will Always Love You," a tune that soared the top of the charts too , and was the theme of her love movie with Costner, which marked an interracial embrace between two sex symbols that peaked the public's interest. And she hit the charts with her popular 90s rendition of Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman, sparking women to feel more confident about being women, and during a time when the nation's women's movement was more vibrant.

One of the world's best selling artists, the pop singer sold 170 million albums, cd's, videos and singles worldwide.

The third child and only daughter of John Houston, a retired army man and small time entertainment executive, and gospel singer Sissy Houston, Whitney Houston grew up middle class in Newark, NJ., and in the baptist church where she sang solos in the youth choir.

Her parents later divorced and her father remarried, dying in 2003 at 82 years old of diabetes and heart disease. He had sued his daughter in 2000 over a contract dispute over money as her one-time manager, something that reportedly caused heighten tension in the singer's life as she battled substance abuse that saw her career spiral downwards in the late 1990s. 

And after her father's death she feuded with her stepmother Barbara Houston, who unsuccessfully sued after her husband's death claiming that while Houston was sole beneficiary of her father's $1 million life insurance policy, his estate required that the proceeds go to payoff the mortgage on their condominium, a claim met by a counter suit from the singer-actress for $1.6 million.

Houston married New Edition singer and soulful crooner Bobby Brown in 1992 and together they have one child, daughter Bobbie Kristina Brown, who was rushed by ambulance to the hospital over her mother's death and later released.

But with the Houston-Brown marriage came turmoil and strife, with Brown in and out of jail for DUI, domestic violence charges lodged by Houston, and failing to pay child support on some of his then three children with other women before his marriage to the pop star.

Reported physical fights between the couple often overshadowed any good in the relationship, coupled with Brown's infidelity, and widespread publicity about their drug use that Houston announced publicly in 2002 during a now infamous ABC interview with Diane Sawyer.

During that interview Houston told Sawyer that 'crack is whack"' and that she did real cocaine, a gesture, coupled with sometimes bizarre episodes caught on camera and video by the paparazzi, that made her life and musical career fodder for tabloid newspapers.

Still, she was loved, and admired as the princess of pop for her generation, pioneering the way for popular pop singers like Christina Auguilera and Beyonce.

She divorced  Brown in 2007,  and she tried several times to make a come back. But Houston, though a music icon in her own right, could not reinvent her mega successes of the mid 1980s and 1990s.  

Houston left her entire estate, a fortune reportedly worth $20 million, to Bobbie Kristina, her only child. The Black community and others across the country, and elsewhere, are hoping that Bobbi Kristina makes a full recovery, though that is unlikely, medical experts have said. (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com) and (www.clevelandurbannews.com)