Goodbye, Dolly

“You just never know…she might be standing right next to you, because she doesn’t wear all that when she’s just out and about.”

That’s how a local Tennesseean happily described what it was like to live in the same town as Dolly Parton who, according to him, was occasionally seen bopping around incognito, the eyelashes and wigs and rhinestone get-ups with the 5 inch heels nowhere to be found.

He then proceeded to share her home address with me, telling me plenty of folks would drive by to see the gates, and to not be alarmed if an RV was parked out front — she and Carl Dean would go camping, you see, and that was just them getting ready.

On those simpler hometown days, she was just as kind and generous as the stage-tour-show days, folks said, just a little more under the radar. And not because she didn’t love to be on the radar and in the limelight, but because she was still just a girl from the Mountains, simple as could be with a literal song in her heart.

Dolly Parton was always something of a legend in my mind. I grew up going to Dollywood and Gatlinburg, TN, it being our prime vacation spot as kids. She was my Mickey Mouse or Disney Princess. Some kids go to Disney World, we went to Dollywood, and just like you’re immersed in the mind and vision of Walt Disney there, you land in Dollywood and are transported to the humble beginnings of a global superstar who, at the end of the day, just wanted to make music and share her light.

We little Lake Charles kids also loved Dolly for the very simple fact that the first place she ever traveled to was our town, taking a 13 hour bus ride to record her first single, Puppy Love, right on the end of Ryan street at Goldband Records.

I’m not sure that’s why we always went to Gatlinburg, but it felt meaningful that we went to where she was from, because she’d come here, to our home, once before.

The Dixie (renamed Dolly) Stampede and Dollywood itself were the highlights of the trip, and a walk through the replica one room cabin, a swing by the museum with the outfits and the behind the scenes rags to riches story were must-sees every time. Her music was piped through the house and played in the car as I grew up, and to no one’s surprise, it became the favorite of my now 9 year old, Rose, who told me mere moments after meeting Pope Leo back in June, “Well, now I have to meet Dolly Parton and then I’ll have met my heroes.”

Dolly Parton died on the feast of St. Genesius, the patron saint of actors and musicians who, in the midst of performing a mock baptism in a play before the Emperor Diocletian, had a conversion, professed Christianity, and was executed for it.

St. Genesius could not proclaim anything but Jesus the moment he knew Christ to be true, and in the words of Dolly Parton, “I don’t cuss and I don’t make fun of Jesus.”

She was authentic. I think that’s what made Dolly Parton so universally beloved. She was always herself and she knew what she was about. There was no duplicity in her, and virtue was evident, and that’s attractive. People are drawn to beauty and virtue, and Dolly had both to the thousandth degree.

Tributes aplenty are pouring in to this remarkable woman, and all I can think to myself is that it has been such a gift to have shared some time on this earth with someone as talented, kind, genuine, and graced as Dolly Parton.

May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace, and may the angels guide her into paradise and the saints greet her in the heavens.

We will always love you, Dolly. Thanks for the memories, the music, and the books.