In a world where you can be anything…

Be a Dolly Parton.

I’ve been sitting on this post for the week since Ms. Parton passed, because, truthfully, her death hit me hard.

No, I didn’t know her personally.

No, we’d never met.

No, I’d never seen her perform in person.

And still, her death at 80 hit me like a ton of bricks.

I know it’s a little weird to mourn when a celebrity dies as if we didn’t know them personally. But I, like billions of others around the world, feel as if I did, and her passing has extinguished one of the brightest lights that has ever shone in time.

Aside from being a huge talent with over 3000 songs ot her credit, Ms. Parton was a philanthropist. A real one, not the kind we often see from rich and powerful people who make a big show of donating to a cause and then you never hear from them again about it.

Dolly came from commercially impoverished beginnings and never forgot it. Because of that, she did everything she could to ensure the lives of others were the best she could make them.

Here are just a few of the ways Dolly gave back:

1. The Dollywood Foundation, launched in her home county of Sevier County, Tennessee, with the goal of decreasing high school dropout rates. She then started the Buddy Program, in which she awarded $500 to every seventh- and eighth-grader who finished high school. The dropout rate declined from 35 percent to just 6 percent.

2. Eagle Mountain Sanctuary. The 30,000-square-foot aviary managed by the American Eagle Foundation shelters the largest collection of “non-releasable” bald eagles. 

3. The Imagination Library. Because her father was illiterate, something he was always ashamed of, The Dollywood Foundation’s Imagination Library began sending one book per month to each enrolled child in the program from birth until their first year of school. To date, over 300 million books have been distributed. This is the one that always chokes me up when I read about it.

4. Following the release of her I Believe in You children’s album, Parton donated $1 million to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in honor of her niece, who was treated for leukemia at that hospital.

5. Parton donated $1 million to coronavirus research at Vanderbilt University, which helped fund Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.

6. The Dollywood Co. announced in February 2022 that it will cover 100% of tuition, fees and books for any employee who is furthering their education.

7. Parton gave another million dollars to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville in June 2022, this time aimed at helping pediatric infectious disease research.

This woman never touted her philanthropy. She never called a press conference to say how wonderful she was at what she was doing for others. She did it quietly and successfully. When other celebrities would have jumped through hoops to be honored, she refused the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Biden and the current resident in the White House.

A defined Christian woman, she believed in LGBTQ+ rights, Gay marriage, and understood the struggles of trans people. One of her most famous quotes is that she wasn’t put on earth to judge others, but that was God’s job. She was put here to love everyone.

Losing someone so beloved, so treasured, so damn GOOD has left a huge void that will never be filled in our hearts or on the world’s stage.

I’m choosing to honor her by honoring how she walked through the world, a humble, genuine woman who never forgot where she came from or whose “child” she was.

Be like Dolly, people. The world will be better.

~Peg