Heroes of the Pandemic – Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton is one of my favorite people–and not just because she’s a great singer and songwriter–“Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You,” “Coat of Many Colors,” “Here you Come Again”, “Silver Threads and Golden Needles,” The two CDs she made with Emily Lou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, TRIO and TRIO II, are two of my favorite CDs of all time.

She’s also one of the funniest, most down-to-earth people ever. She’s said, “I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb…and I also know that I’m not blonde,” and “I’m in the public eye, so I don’t care who knows what I get done. If I see something saggin’, draggin’, or baggin’, I get it sucked, trucked, or plucked. I remember when she was hosting the Country Music Awards and her dress split and she had to come out in somebody else’s coat. “Well,” she said, “that’s what you git for tryin’ to stick twenty pounds of mud in a ten-pound sack.”

She’s also a great person, one of those people who came up against all odds out of a poverty-stricken childhood, got rich and famous, and somehow never lost track of where she came from or who or what she was. Our whole family adores her, and her actions this week made us love her even more.

She came out as unequivocally in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. “Of course black lives matter,” she said. “Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”

That alone would make her tops in my book, but she’s also donated a million dollars to the Vanderbilt Medical Center to help fund research into a cure for coronavirus, and she wrote a song called “When Life is Good Again,” about the pandemic. “Be safe,” the lyrics say, “be respectful, wear your mask, lead with love.”

And two years ago she had a feature at one of her amusement parks called Dixie Stampede, but then people told her that Dixie had racist overtones and was an offensive word and associated with the Confederacy, which she hadn’t known. “There’s such a thing as ignorant innocence,” she said, “and so many of us are guilty of that. And I thought, Well, I don’t want to offend everybody…We’ll just call it the Stampede. As soon as you realize that something is a problem you should fix it. Don’t be a dumbass. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose.”

Oh, my gosh, there it is in a nutshell: “Don’t be a dumbass.”

It sums up everything. I’ve got to get a bumper sticker with that on it.

And this is only the latest great thing she’s done.

Here are some others:

–Her Dollywood Foundation has instituted a Buddy Program which pays $500.00 to every seventh and eighth grader in Tennessee who finished high school. It decreased the dropout rate to 6 percent.

–Her Imagination Library provides a free book to children once a month from the time they’re born till they start school. She started with her home county in Tennessee, but the program is now worldwide, with 100 million books donated so far. She said, “It came from the fact that a lot of my own relatives didn’t get to go to school because we were mountain people…My own dad couldn’t read and write.”

–When wildfires destroyed Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge (her home town), she held a telethon to raise over 13 million dollars. She also provided $1000.00 a month for six months to families whose homes were destroyed in the fires. She is still helping some people pay for rent, utilities, food, and mental health resources.

–She’s also donated millions to animal rights, HIV-Aids research, and children’s hospitals.

–She has been unfailingly supportive of LGBTQ people, saying “those who criticize and judge LGBTQ people are committing their own kind of sin. The sin of judging is just as bad as any other sin they might say somebody else is committing. I try to love everybody.” When a visitor at Dollywood was stopped at the gate and told to turn her LGBTQ t-shirt inside out because it might offend others, she immediately stepped in, apologized, and changed the policy. “Everyone knows of my personal support of gay and lesbian communities. Dollywood is a family park and all families are welcome.”

–She wrote an Oscar-nominated song, “Travellin’ Man” for a movie about a trans woman called TRANSAMERICA and performed it at the Oscar ceremonies.

–She’s spoken out boldly on the bathroom bans for trans people, saying in her usual forthright manner, “I think everybody should be treated with respect. I hope that everybody gets a chance to be who and what they are. I just know, if I have to pee, I’m gon’ pee, wherever it’s got to be.”

Other Dolly quotes:

–“I’m not God, you know. I believe in God, I think God is the judge. I don’t judge or criticize and I don’t think we’re supposed to.”

–“When I got somethin’ to say, I’ll say it.”

–“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”

And, finally, she said this, which is practically the best thing I’ve heard yet for getting through our current trials and tribulations:

“When I wake up, I expect things to be good. If they’re not, then I try to set about tryin’ to make them as good as I can, ‘cause I know I’m gonna have to live that day anyway.

So why not try to make the mot of it if you can? Some days they pan out a little better than others, but you still gotta always just try.”

You go, Dolly! You’re a shining light in this dark and dirty world!