Dolly Parton died this Tuesday at the age of 80, in Nashville. Her nephew Bryan Seaver, who was not only family but also her head of security, announced it in a video she had recorded herself.
There is a phrase that has circulated in English for years to describe her: she put the country in country music, and the gold in a heart of gold. It is not just a play on words. It is what she was.
She sold more than 100 million records. She won 10 Grammys and received 55 nominations. She wrote Jolene, she wrote I Will Always Love You, she wrote 9 to 5. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
But what made her endearing cannot be contained in an award. She created a library that sent millions of free books to children who would never meet her. She donated one million dollars to medical research.
She defended the LGBTQ+ community when that came at a high cost, and she did so without fighting with anyone, simply by embracing. She had been widowed in March of last year. Carl Dean, her husband of 58 years, died at the age of 82. They never had children, but she left millions of godchildren in every child who received one of her books.
The family asked that, instead of flowers, donations be made to her Imagination Library. The woman who gave her name to the genre she loved is gone. And the gold went to a heart that never stopped giving until the end.
