Yesterday, I was overwhelmed by the conversations surrounding Dolly Parton’s death, online—Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram-- and in person. Two trivia teams named themselves in honor of Dolly last night. The Empire State Building lit up in pink for her; the Dallas skyline did too. The Buckingham Palace band played “Nine to Five”. I won’t lie: this one really hurts. It hurt so much I’ve dropped my satirist’s shield, writing something that absolutely took me by surprise. Columns often do that to some extent, going in a direction I didn’t expect, but this is the most extreme example I’ve encountered. It’s uncomfortable—so uncomfortable, because you know how much I hate getting personal—but I promised I’d always tell you the truth, and here’s the truth.
Why does it hurt so badly? I think it’s because it was so easy to think of her as a friend; you just plain liked her, as is the case with the others I list below; their only objective was to make us smile and remind us of the importance of humanity. You knew you’d be accepted by her, and encouraged to go pour yourself a cup of ambition, and validated. She’d care about you, even if she didn’t know you. She was genuinely nice. That’s vanishingly rare but maybe, in her honor, we can each do something about that, something small every single day. She was so much more than a dumb blonde. Oh, so much more.
We lost a good one yesterday, kittens. We lost a national treasure. I’m typing this with tears in my eyes, using one of my three annual emotions, for someone I don’t know and never met.
There is not one single bad thing to be said about her anywhere, no matter where on the globe you hail from. She’s up there with Bob Ross, Steve Irwin, Fred Rogers, Betty White, Robin Williams. All of whom did nothing but make the world a better place than they found it and for no other reason than it was simply the right thing to do.
Unlike Donald Trump who is obsessed with building hollow monuments to his ego to escape the fate of Ozymandias, Dolly chose to use her fame and fortune for good. She could have taken her money and spent it all surrounding herself with objects full of hollow meaning and superficial status. She could have worked tirelessly to make herself seem better than she was, living in desperate fear of being forgotten and running, forever running, to escape her past. Building castles in the sky and wandering the house alone at night, wondering what it would take to fill the gaping void in her soul.
But she did the opposite. She let her past define her in the best way, in her coat of many colors, and let it inform her world view. She remembered who she was and where she came from and she learned from it. Dolly appreciated the things she’d accomplished and she was determined to make the world a better place for those who’d been where she once was. Dolly could have reveled in her success, pulling the ladder up behind her once she’d hit the bigtime. She could have, but she didn’t. She chose to celebrate people, not herself, lowering the ladder and helping others up.
Dolly mattered. She mattered so much. Our grandparents and parents and ourselves can’t remember a world without Dolly.
Just look at the legacy she left behind.
1988: Established the Dollywood Foundation in Sevier County, TN, her old stomping ground. The goal was to decrease high school dropout rates. The Buddy Program gave $500 to every 7th and 8th grader who finished high school, making the dropout rate fall from 35% to 6%.
1989: Offered a $500 scholarship to every student in Sevier County who wanted to attend Hiwassee College.
1991: Built the Eagle Mountain Sanctuary at Dollywood. It’s a 30,000 square foot aviary with the largest collection of non-releasable bald eagles. She got an award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2003 for her efforts to save these majestic, important birds.
1995: Established the Imagination Library. It sends one book per month to each child from birth until their first year in school. Her father was illiterate, so she founded this in honor of him. It’s provided 300,000,000 books across the country, encouraging brain development in those crucial early years and fostering bonding between parent and child. The last book sent out under her purview will be arriving in mailboxes in a few days. Please consider donating, as Republicans quietly cut public funding for the program not long ago.
2000: Began offering a $15,000 scholarship to five high school seniors in Sevier County. It’s awarded to those who “have a dream they wish to pursue and who can successfully communicate their plan and commitment to realize their dreams.”
2003: Invested the royalties (said to be over $10 million) from Whitney Houston’s cover of “I Will Always Love You” into an office building and strip center in one of Nashville’s historically Black neighborhoods.
2007: Set up a benefit concert for a new Sevier County hospital raised $500,000; Dollywood as her Dixie Stampede each contributed $250,000 as well. The LeConte Medical Center opened in 2010 and features a Dolly Parton Center for Women’s Services.
2016: After wildfires devastated East Tennessee, the “Smoky Mountains Rise: a Benefit for the My People Fund” raised more than $13 million for residents in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. Reba McEntire, Cyndi Lauper, Kenny Rogers, Alison Krauss and others appeared on the telethon.
2016: Launched the My People Fund to continue wildfire relief efforts, offering $1000/month for six months to families affected by the fires, careful to note that it was a “hand up”, not a handout. The fund donated $8.9 million to residents in need, and continues to help them pay for rent, utilities, food, and mental health services.
2016: Awarded a $30,000 Special Merit Scholarship to two-year-old Evey Jones, celebrating Imagination Library’s shipping out one million books per month.
2017: Donated $1 million to the Monroe Carell Jr Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in honor of her niece, who had been treated for leukemia there.
2020: Donated $1 million to coronavirus research at Vanderbilt, which helped fund Moderna’s vaccine.
2021: Dolly and her various Smoky Mountain businesses raised $700,000 to help residents impacted by the devastating floods in October 2021.
2022: In February, the Dollywood Co. announced it would cover 100% of tuition, books, and fees for any Dollywood employee who wished to further their education.
2022: Donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in June, to further pediatric infectious disease research.
2022: Received the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.
2024: Donated $1 million to the Mountain Ways Foundation to help residents affected by catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Helene. Several of her businesses matched her donation and gave another $1 million.
Dolly was an uncredited producer for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, helping greenlight and fund the series, because she knew how important strong female role models were, and how badly needed.
She wrote more than 3000 songs.
25 of her singles hit number 1 on the Billboard Country charts.
She was nominated for 55 Grammys, and won 11.
Dolly was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
She received the National Medal of Arts in 2005. Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.
We didn’t deserve Dolly, but we had her, and we had her for a reason. If Donny Trump is showing us what we don’t want to be, Dolly showed us what we do want to be, and that kindness and caring are free. In the end, love always wins, and if her death seems to come at the wrong time, the message is sorely needed.
She was the best of Christianity. She was the best of America. She was grace. She was class. She was acceptance. She was love. She showed us all what hard work can achieve, and she didn’t have to cheat anyone or step on anyone to make her way up the ladder of fame and fortune. She earned everything she got, and she got it honest, and she made it look easy. It wasn’t easy, but she never let us see the scars.
Dolly isn’t dead, not really. Her stardust remains, even if we can’t always see it. Einstein proved that matter and energy are equivalent. The First Law of Thermodynamics says that matter cannot be destroyed, only transformed. Her body may be gone, but her irreplaceable soul, her ka, her effervescent spirit isn’t. She’s just transitioned to that other plane of existence, and she’s around us and in us. To dismember something is to take it apart; by that logic, to remember something is to put it back together. Every time you remember her, or do something in remembrance of her, she’s there. She’s with us. And we will always love you.
She showed us that you can live and succeed in life by being kind and caring and honest. You can thrive and you can make the world a better place than you found it. It’s easy to lose sight of that today, but she’s reminded us of these values, and of the American spirit.
In a world of Donnies, be a Dolly.
“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.” –Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
That’s all I have for you today, kittens.
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