Most of us know Michael Jackson as the King of Pop, the biggest star in the world. To Katherine Jackson he was just her son, the boy who worried about her.
When Michael was 18, he earned his own money for the first time. One of the first things on his mind wasn’t a car or a mansion for himself. It was his mom.
He wanted to buy her a new house.
Katherine told the story years later on a Dateline NBC special called “Michael Jackson: A Mother’s Story.” The way she remembered it is sweet and simple. Her boy came to her with a plan.
“When he was 18 and had his own money, he said, ‘Mother, I’m going to buy you a new house,’ and we went shopping all over for a new house,” she said.
So they went looking together. Mother and son, driving around, checking out homes.
But it didn’t go the way Michael planned.
Prices had climbed higher than they expected, and nothing they saw felt right. “And homes had gone up so expensive and we couldn’t find a piece of property we wanted,” Katherine said.
So Michael did something else. Instead of buying a new place, he put his money into the home the family already had.
That home sits on Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino, California. Michael’s father Joe Jackson bought it back in 1971, and Michael grew up there with all his brothers and sisters. Michael had it remodeled from top to bottom. And the family never left.
Years went by. The house filled up again with a new generation.
By 2010 Katherine was living at Hayvenhurst and raising Michael’s own three children there. They had the run of the place, swimming in the pool and playing ball in the yard.
That’s when Katherine said the thing that stops you cold. By then she could have moved anywhere she wanted. She had every reason to. But she explained why she stays, and it has nothing to do with the house itself.
“The children love it too. They swim, they play football, basketball…everything. And because it was from Michael, now I don’t think I want to move.”
It wasn’t about square footage or a nice neighborhood. It was about who the home came from.
Katherine is 96 now, born in May of 1930. She has watched fame come and go. But ask her about that house, and her mind goes straight back to the boy who once said, “Mother, I’m going to buy you a new house.”
She’s still there, in the home her son fixed up for her.
See the photos of the Hayvenhurst gates and Katherine with Michael through the years below.