Oprah Returns Home To Dedicate Youth Center

KOSCIUSKO, Miss., September 6, 2006 -- Oprah Winfrey's new youth club opened Tuesday, a day after she returned to her native Kosciusko to dedicate the 32,000-square-foot facility she helped sponsor.

"What I have learned is you dream a big dream and you hand that dream over to a power that is greater than yourself. I call it God," Winfrey told some 400 people at the dedication of The Oprah Winfrey Boys & Girls Club of Kosciusko Attala County.

"God can dream a bigger dream for you than you can dream for yourself," the 52-year-old host of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" said at Monday's dedication.

Winfrey thanked her father, Vernon Winfrey, and her grandmother Hattie Mae Lee, who raised her in Kosciusko.

"She used to say to me she hoped I would grow up to be able to get some good white folks, like she had some good white folks," Winfrey said of her grandmother. "What I don't think she ever imagined is that I would grow up and get some good white folks working for me."

Winfrey said her father understood the importance of education. "Had I not been sent to live with my father I would probably have five or six kids by now," she said, shortly before turning to him. "Without you my life would not have happened nor would this have happened, so thank you, Mr. Winfrey."

The center, which was built through Winfrey's foundation, expected to welcome 225 children this week.

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