Helen and I made a pilgrimage to the memorial for St. Dolly of Sevierville, by which I mean the ad hoc demonstration of love in front of the Dolly Parton statue at the Sevier County Courthouse.
There was a sizable crowd gathered, but at a bit of a distance. People were taking photos, and people politely lined up and encouraged each group to take their time posing by the statue before the next people came in. The mood was reverent, but pleasant: These were people there to pay their respects, not simply to mourn, and one way to respect Dolly was to be nice to the other people who were there for the same purpose.
Every business had signs up, mostly on the theme of “we will always love you” (as shown above). Flags everywhere were at half-staff. Dolly meant a lot to a lot of people, and a lot more to people from Tennessee, and more still to people from East Tennessee (a very distinct region, one of the three “grand divisions” in the state, which have very real cultural, and to some degree legal, identities). And more still, of course, to the people of her hometown, which she never forgot, and which will never forget her.
Dolly’s rags-to-riches story was a real one — though she did get a boost from her uncle Bill Owens, a fairly successful Nashville songwriter who spotted her talent early and did what he could to promote her early on — and that story resonated with the people of her town. Even more important was her generosity, both spiritual — she never forgot her roots, and never disrespected her town, her state, or the South — and financial, as Dolly was there for her community in good times and bad. Dollywood has brought over a billion dollars to Sevierville, providing jobs galore and more. When Hurricane Helene devastated East Tennessee she and her businesses donated 2 million dollars to the victims. When wildfires struck her community, she raised 9 million dollars to help: “After the 2016 wildfires in Sevier County, where Parton grew up, her My People Fund raised nearly $9 million to help families who lost their homes. Families received $1,000 a month to help them get back on their feet. The fund also later provided $200,000 to local volunteer fire departments and their training center.”
She made a huge donation to the Knoxville-based East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, which is now known as the Dolly Parton Children’s Hospital. The renaming was scheduled for the day after her death. Literally millions of children have gotten books from her Imagination Library. As Mary Katharine Ham writes, generosity, along with gratitude, was her defining characteristic — not only financial generosity, but a generosity of spirit that was where the financial generosity came from.
People hearing you’re from East Tennessee usually ask if you know Dolly. I never knew her except in her public persona. I only met her once, very briefly, in the 1980s. I was staying at the Plaza hotel, and her corner suite was only a few doors down from my room. We were getting to our doors at the same time and I recognized her (it wasn’t hard). She could see that recognition and smiled at me and said “I hope you had a good night.” I thought she looked tired, and that that was, well, generous of her. Aside from my high school coach who had dated her when they were in high school together, that’s my only connection.
But you can’t live in East Tennessee, or in America, or really a lot of places in the world, without having a connection to Dolly Parton.
Goodbye, Dolly. We’re grateful for your time here.
Good words, celebrating a good woman. Perhaps the thing I liked best about her, besides her amazing talent (listen to her album, The Grass is Blue) was that she certainly seemed like she loved being a woman. She had charm, reveled in it, and didn’t abuse it. She celebrated feminine character. I appreciate that she did that. She did it in an exaggerated way, but she could pull it off.
I think she was the last unifying American figure. Is there anyone else?
So it feels like part of our shared identity is buried with her.