Collective grieving is a rare phenomenon. As she did throughout her long and beautiful life, Dolly Parton brought the world together to mourn her passing last month. Whether or not it’s officially declared Dolly Parton Day, I’ll be celebrating her remarkable life on 9/25 next week and every year on September 25th.
It’s a notable few that society communally mourns. Before Dolly, I don’t remember being this bereft by a celebrity’s passing since the deaths of Princess Diana and Prince. Neither of them hit me this hard, though. The anguish of Dolly’s passing felt as visceral to me as the loss of my own Mother last year.
Dolly was a universal Mother. She was authentic, she was a unifyer, and she was always unabashedly, uniquely herself. Glamorous was an understatement when describing her. Dolly was the living embodiment of beauty, both inside and out. “The higher the hair, the closer to God,” is one of my favorite of her quotes.
While Dolly was a multi-hyphenate creative, her real superpower was comforting a fractured world. Her talent and generosity were always the balm we needed. Growing up poor in a close-knit family of 14 in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, she didn’t waste one minute of her precious life on self pity. Dolly knew her family was rich in what mattered: food before them, a roof over them, and love between them. She wrote the song Coat of Many Colors as a testament to her mother’s love and resourcefulness in stitching together rags to create a beautiful coat to keep her daughter warm. The song’s rich imagery and Dolly’s ability to reframe the thoughtlessness of schoolyard bullies are also a testament to a daughter's gratitude.
Entertainment was her medium, but in her heart and soul, Dolly was a writer. Her songs were deeply personal vignettes of her life growing up from humble beginnings, of striving for success in the male-dominated world of country music, and of love and heartbreak. Through beauty and metaphor, her music became universal. Her lyrics and her ethereal voice showed us that when we open our hearts and minds, we become sisters and brothers under the skin. Listening to Dolly’s music made us feel understood. It made us feel like family.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dolly donated one million dollars to Vanderbilt University for vaccine research. Months later, she became one of the first to receive the Modera vaccine that her generosity helped to develop. As she received her shot, she parodied her oft-covered hit Jolene, changing the title to Vaccine and adding in the line, "I'm begging of you, please don't be a chicken squat.” During that same traumatic time, she expressed her support for the Black Lives Matter movement. No one dared to cancel Dolly.
Perhaps her greatest legacy is the establishment of the Imagination Library, which mails a new book each month to enrolled children from birth through kindergarten. For her, the endeavor was personal: Dolly’s father, Robert Lee Parton, was a sharecropper who could neither read nor write. She saw how that limited his opportunities, and she was determined to help other families by promoting literacy through fostering a life-long love of reading.
What originated as a small program in Sevier County, Tennessee in 1995, the Imagination Library expanded to serve children throughout the United States in 2000, the same year Dolly’s father passed away. In 2018, Dolly told NPR, "he got to hear the kids call me 'The Book Lady.' He got a big kick out of that. But he took great pride in it and felt like he'd helped do something special." The Imagination Library, now a global initiative, recently delivered its 300 millionth book. Every book, every month is accompanied by a letter from “The Book Lady,” closing with these words: “Dream More, Learn More, Care More, and Be More! I will always love you, Dolly.”
Music: If You Hadn’t Been There, Dolly Parton
