During an interview with PEOPLE at the “It’s A Wonderful Lifetime Yuletide Event” at E.P. & L.P. Rooftop in West Hollywood, acclaimed gospel singer BeBe Winans shared fond memories of his deceased friend Whitney Houston.
Winans, however, stated that Houston, who sadly passed away on February 11, 2012, at the age of 48, struggled to handle her fame. “She was a sister, and beyond a sister,” the 62-year-old said. “She was someone who had such a big heart and loved people and wanted to help people, but sometimes felt caged because of her success and her fame.”
Despite the fame, Winans stated that his deceased friend “wanted to walk in malls” and “do everything that regular working people do.” Winans also revealed that Houston “sometimes ran away … and her hideaway was our house in Nashville, Tennessee.”
“We’d get a phone call just saying, ‘Is she there? Don’t tell her we called,’ and I’d say, ‘Yes, she’s here. She’s on my couch asleep,'” the It All Comes Down to Love singer continued. “That was the kind of person people didn’t get a chance to see. That was the Whitney that we knew and miss terribly.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Winans also reflected on a time when Whitney gave him money to help fund the cost of a house he was buying. “I remember years ago when she came to a house I was about to buy … she came there knowing she had something in her purse that was going to allow me to buy the house, because the banks had rejected my down payment because they felt like I was a risk. And she found out about it,” he recalled.
Winans also said that Houston even met up with him to tour the house. “On the back porch, she said, ‘This looks like my brother’s house,’ and I was like, ‘You said that about every room we went in,’ and then she reached in her pocket and she put out an envelope, and she gave it to me and in it was $50,000 to pay for what the bank had put on me,” he revealed.
“When I paid her back, she called and said, ‘You paid me back?’ and I said, ‘I told you I was.’ She said, ‘A lot of people say that!’ That was Whitney.”
