Yes, Dolly Parton Really Was That Nice

The world lost Dolly Parton today at age 80, and somehow even that sentence feels too small. Dolly was a singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman, philanthropist and cultural institution, but listing her accomplishments is like describing the Smoky Mountains by counting the trees. The facts may be correct, but they do not explain the view.

I was fortunate to interview Dolly four times between 2012 and 2016. The first came while I was writing for Yahoo!, and I later interviewed her twice for The Hollywood Billboard, where I served as editor. Two conversations were by telephone. The others brought me face-to-face with her, once in St. Louis and once in Los Angeles. In a business where some celebrities can make a brief conversation feel like an audience with minor European royalty, Dolly made people comfortable. She was ever so gracious, always attentive and completely present.

What stayed with me was not simply that she was kind. Plenty of famous people learn to appear kind when a microphone is nearby. With Dolly, kindness seemed less like publicity and more like the machinery quietly running beneath everything else. Whenever I mentioned something generous or thoughtful she had done, she answered with a story about somebody else who had done something generous or thoughtful. You could hand Dolly a compliment wrapped in ribbon, and she would add another ribbon and give it to someone else just as fast.

That habit revealed more about her than any rehearsed answer could. Dolly understood that no one reaches her level alone, and she never pretended otherwise. She spoke about people who helped her or deserved more attention. She possessed one of the world’s most recognizable faces, voices and personalities, yet she remained remarkably skilled at turning the spotlight away from herself.

That spotlight had plenty of reasons to stay on her. Dolly wrote songs that crossed musical boundaries and generations. “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You” became pieces of American culture, not merely entries in a recording catalog. She could break your heart, make you laugh and tell a complete story before many singers had finished clearing their throats. She conquered country music, crossed into pop, succeeded in movies and built Dollywood into a destination reflecting the place she came from.

Yet her greatest legacy may not fit on a record or movie screen. Through her Imagination Library, Dolly placed books into the hands of children around the world. She supported medical research, disaster relief and communities in need, often without turning generosity into a parade in her own honor. Her rhinestones were impossible to miss, but much of her finest work happened beyond their glare.

Dolly also understood laughter. She knew exactly what people saw when they looked at her, and she usually made the joke before anyone else had time. That humor did not mean she took nothing seriously. It meant she knew what deserved seriousness and what did not. She could laugh at her appearance while remaining fiercely serious about her work, family, and faith.

Today, tributes will be filled with awards, record sales and career milestones, and she earned every single one of them. My memories are quieter. I remember a woman who listened. I remember a gentle giant who stopped her tour bus at Dollar General to shop for trinkets and, while she was there, to pay for everything that everyone in the store was buying. I remember someone who had every reason to make a conversation about herself but repeatedly chose to talk about the goodness of others. I remember leaving each interview convinced that the public Dolly and the private Dolly were not competing characters. The warmth was real.

Dolly Parton spent a lifetime beneath some of entertainment’s brightest lights, but she never acted as though the light belonged only to her. She shared it—with musicians, coworkers, neighbors, children and strangers she would never meet. Perhaps that is why her loss feels personal to millions who never had the opportunity I had.

I was fortunate to speak with her four times. I was even more fortunate to discover that Dolly Parton was every bit as kind as we hoped she was.

Please share your own memory of Dolly—whether it came from meeting her, hearing a favorite song, watching one of her films or receiving one of those little books she helped place in a child’s hands. Today, the stories belong to all of us.