Anderson Cooper honored his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, on CNN Monday morning, following the death of the fashion designer, actress and socialite at the age of 95.
“Gloria Vanderbilt, my mom, lived her entire life in the public eye,” Cooper says, narrating the obituary package. “Born in 1924, her father, Reginald Vanderbilt, was heir to the Vanderbilt Railroad fortune but gambled away most of his inheritance and died when my mom was just a baby.”
Later in the almost seven-minute video Cooper says: “I always thought of her as a visitor from another world, a traveler stranded here who had come from a distant star that burned out long ago. I always felt it was my job to try to protect her. She was the strongest person I’ve ever met, but she wasn’t tough, she never developed a thick skin to protect herself from hurt. She wanted to feel it all. She wanted to feel life’s pleasures, its pains as well. She trusted too freely, too completely, and suffered tremendous losses, but she always pressed on, always worked hard, always believed the best was yet to come.”
The “Anderson Cooper 360” anchor reveals during the video that Vanderbilt was taken to the hospital earlier this month and that is where she learned “she had very advanced cancer in her stomach and that it had spread.”
“When the doctor told her she had cancer, she was silent for a while and then she said, ‘Well, it’s like that old song, ‘Show Me the Way to Get Out of This World (‘Cause That’s Where Everything Is),” Cooper says.
He closes the package: “What an extraordinary life. What an extraordinary mom. And what an incredible woman.”
Watch the video below.
Watch @AndersonCooper's obituary for his mother Gloria Vanderbilt. "What an extraordinary life. What an extraordinary mom. And what an incredible woman." pic.twitter.com/YXz66LOr7W
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 17, 2019