According to CNN, Family and close friends will say goodbye to Whitney Houston with a private funeral and burial Saturday in her native New Jersey, trying to come to grips with grief that the pastor of her childhood church called “very deep.”
“We are all hurting,” Pastor Joe Carter of New Hope Baptist Church in Newark told CNN’s Jason Carroll on Tuesday. “That voice is silenced. But she left us with so much.”
Earlier in the day, Carolyn Whigham — the owner of Whigham Funeral Home in the northern New Jersey city — said that Houston’s funeral will start at noon Saturday at that church.
Carter said that he’ll officiate what he described as a “small … invite-only service.” The church seats a maximum of 1,500 people, and the pastor said he expects “all these empty pews to be filled with people whose hearts are broken.”
“She was able to leave us with so many wonderful memories of that God-given gift,” he said. “That’s what we are celebrating on Saturday.”
At the request of the late singer’s mother Cissy Houston, the eulogy will be given by Marvin Winans, a gospel singer and pastor at Detroit’s Perfecting Church, Carter later told CNN’s Erin Burnett. Winans officiated Houston’s 1992 marriage ceremony to R&B singer Bobby Brown.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told reporters Tuesday that he planned to issue an executive order so that flags at government buildings throughout the late entertainer’s native state would fly at half-staff on the day of her funeral.
There will be no large-scale public memorial in Newark in the immediate aftermath of Houston’s death, city spokeswoman Anne Torres said. The funeral director at the Whigham Funeral Home told city officials that the family did not want a big memorial, according to Torres.
Carter, the New Hope pastor, said organizers hope to set up a large screen outside his church, so people who cannot get inside can see the funeral proceedings.
The pop superstar’s body was flown to New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport from California on a private plane belonging to filmmaker Tyler Perry, according to a law enforcement source with knowledge of the situation.
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