There are famous people, there are legends, and then there are those rare souls who somehow make millions of strangers feel as though they knew them. Dolly Parton was one of those people.
Her death Tuesday at age 80 closes the book on one of the most remarkable careers American entertainment has ever known, but somehow the songs, awards and bright lights don’t seem like the most important things to remember right now. More than anything, it was the love Dolly seemed to pour out everywhere she went.
She gave us songs that could make us laugh, cry, dance or remember someone we once loved, and she never seemed embarrassed by where she came from. The little girl who grew up poor in the Smokey Mountains of East Tennessee carried those roots with her all the way to the biggest stages in the world, and when success gave her the ability to help others, she did.
Perhaps nothing better represents her heart than the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. What began in 1995 as an effort to provide books to young children in her home county in Tennessee grew into a worldwide literacy program that has put hundreds of millions of books into the hands of children, many of them right here in Sampson.
That is quite a legacy when you think about it. Long after the final notes of “Jolene” have played and another generation discovers “9 to 5,” children who may never know Dolly Parton’s music will learn to read because she cared enough to give them a book.
Her generosity extended far beyond literacy, as she helped families devastated by wildfires in Tennessee and supported education and health care. When the world faced COVID-19, she donated $1 million toward research at Vanderbilt University that contributed to the development of the Moderna vaccine.
Perhaps what made Dolly so universally beloved, however, was that her generosity never seemed like a publicity campaign; it simply seemed like Dolly. She could laugh at herself and poke fun at the hair, the clothes and the larger-than-life image before anybody else had the chance. Beneath all of it was a woman of faith who appeared to understand something we sometimes forget: You don’t have to agree with everybody to love everybody.
That may be the piece of Dolly Parton’s legacy our world needs most, especially at a time when we spend so much energy searching for reasons to divide ourselves. Politics, religion, race, geography and generations can all become lines separating us, and somewhere along the way, kindness can become conditional. Never for Dolly.
She came from very little and became enormously wealthy, yet never appeared ashamed of poverty. She became internationally famous without forgetting the mountains that raised her, building an empire while maintaining the ability to make ordinary people believe they mattered.
Maybe that’s why losing her hurts so much, because we didn’t just lose a country singer or an entertainer. We lost a little piece of goodness, but thankfully, Dolly left plenty of it behind.
It’s there in every child opening a book from the Imagination Library, every songwriter brave enough to tell the truth and every person who chooses compassion when cruelty would be easier. And, of course, it’s there whenever someone presses play.
Dolly Parton once gave the world a song called “I Will Always Love You.” After a lifetime of watching her love the world right back, perhaps those are the most fitting words we could offer her now:
We will always love you, too, Dolly.