O.J. Simpson: The Relationship With His Father That He Rarely Spoke About
O.J. Simpson and his father, Jimmy Lee Simpson. (Photo: Mickey Osterreicher/ESPN Films via AP)
One of the many details that the new ESPN documentary O.J.: Made in America has brought out is the strained relationship the former football star had with his father, Jimmy Lee Simpson.
The elder Simpson, a janitor, left O.J., his mother, and three other children, when O.J. was 4. Rarely was he around while the kids were growing up in an impoverished neighborhood of San Francisco.
O.J. explained in a 1977 interview that he missed having his father there.
“I resented his absence, especially when I became a teenager and was trying to find out who I was,” he told Parents magazine. “I really needed a man around then for guidance. I get along with my father now, but it’s taken years for me to come to terms with my feelings."
Proof of O.J.’s relationship with his father is rare, especially in contrast to his relationship with his mother, Eunice, who died at 80 in 2001. The hospital orderly’s celebrity son named her as the most important person in his life during his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
"You just don’t know what it is to be 8 years old and all your friends think you have the best mother in the neighborhood,” he said at the 1985 ceremony.
Eunice passed away in the San Francisco house that O.J. bought for her in the 1970s, while he was playing for the 49ers.
O.J. Simpson with his parents and son. (Photo: Eric Demme/Getty Images)
Jimmy Lee Simpson died of AIDS in 1985, according to Jeffrey Toobin's The Run of His Life: The People V. O.J. Simpson. (Others have reported that the death occurred in 1986.)
Later in his life, as audiences learn in the new documentary — though it was also in Toobin’s book — Jimmy Lee was openly gay. One of O.J.’s friends from childhood, Calvin Tennyson, recalled the way he learned about it.
“One day we went over to his dad’s house, and we knocked on the door,” Tennyson explained. “And when his dad opened the door, he was in a bathrobe, which is not a crime. But then his dad kind of opened the door more, and there was a guy in the back in a bathrobe too. So it was obvious that his dad was gay.”
The aftermath was a little awkward.
“We left and on the way back we were quiet because it was so much tension,” he said. “We got to this certain point and we both bust out laughing."
Tennyson later told a mutual friend, Joe Bell, that O.J.’s dad was gay, but Bell didn’t want to listen.
"Back in our day, that was the worst thing in the world that you could ever think about,” Bell said. “An African-American man being a homosexual."
Bell was then asked on camera if he had ever spoken to O.J. about the subject, but he said he hadn’t.
"I felt like that issue was enough for [Simpson] to deal with himself,” Bell said.
As a father himself, O.J. has four adult children, Arnelle and Jason, from his marriage to first wife Marguerite Whitley, as well as Sydney and Justin whose mother is Nicole Brown. He reportedly maintains relationships with all of them from prison.
