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Updated 05/14/2010 04:37 PM

Fans Bid Farewell To Singer, Actress Lena Horne

By: Dean Meminger

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Family, friends and fans gathered today at an Upper East Side church to say their final goodbyes to singer and actress Lena Horne, who died Sunday at age 92.

A funeral mass at the Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola on Park Avenue was attended by politicians and performers alike.

"I'm standing here because of her,” said actor Cicely Tyson. “There will never be another one."

"We all here because of her, we are all standing here,” said singer Dionne Warwick. “She treated me like a daughter and I treated her like my momma. I'm going to miss her a lot."

"I'm standing here because of her,” said actor Cicely Tyson. “There will never be another one."

"We all here because of her, we are all standing here,” said singer Dionne Warwick. “She treated me like a daughter and I treated her like my momma. I'm going to miss her a lot."

Horne was born in Brooklyn in 1917 and started performing in Harlem at the age of 16. She also spent time living in Queens.

She was one of the first black performers hired to sing with a major white band.

"Her commitment, her passion, her talent, her beauty, all of it, she was fantastic,” said singer Diahanne Carol.

And fans say it is because of those traits that in the 1940s Horne became one of the first blacks signed to a long-term Hollywood contract. Yet it was still a tough era for African-Americans.

"When I think of what she had to endure just so that we could see her artistry and beauty, it makes me weep,” said opera singer Jessye Norman.

"Lena Horne was an American original,” said the entertainer Geoffrey Holder.

Due to America's racism and segregation, Horne was angry with her treatment in Hollywood and upset with the way the nation viewed blacks. She used her voice and star power to support the civil rights movement.

"She will be remembered as a proud black women who knew that she was black and refused to deny it,” said former Mayor David Dinkins.

"She was a trail blazer, a game changer, and she changed the culture of this country," Governor David Paterson said.

Lena Horne was also a family person – a mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. Her family says she loved her make-up, shoes, and jewelry.

"Gold bracelets from here to here and she jingled like a cat whenever she walked,” recalled granddaughter Jenny Lumet. “So if you were stuffing your face, or playing in her makeup or shoes, you knew when to run because you could hear her coming."

Now fans say she is being heard in the heavens above.