I don’t know why, but in my mind, I thought Dolly Parton would never die.
Devastating. Something beautiful said goodbye.
Dolly is deservedly being remembered across the globe, but her impact on the South is psychologically and positively oversized to a point most have missed – she’s one of the top three leaders the South has ever seen.
Besides having a voice that gave us a taste of sounds in heaven, she was able to break through our perpetual cycle of myth and romanticism to cope with our past.
Instead, Dolly gave us the confidence to not be so damn defensive, which, in many ways, we liked being defensive and rebellious, but Dolly, through example, said it was ok to be us as she joked about how it took a lot of money to look so cheap.
I think she might have been one of the first ‘just be you’ leaders in the United States. And it stuck in the South. We could be us.
Born in a barn wood frame house without electricity, our queen, Dolly, could measure up to and above all the other queens in Hollywood and high society, vanishing our lingering bouts of guilt and doubt. And then she doubled down on Dollywood, a masterful entrepreneurial stroke for a wide swath of folks who would never see the likes of Disney, much less the bright lights of Broadway.
Dolly didn’t just entertain: she validated us. She accomplished the height of leadership – changed us without us really knowing we were changing. We were following her.
And her leadership was far from accidental. When I see her body of work, I think of one word: Genius.
She knew from study or instinct what Faulkner said about changing the South: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
So she changed us by making a very strategic decision, staying out of the cultural squabbles and sermons on who was right and wrong. Not passing judgment.
She didn’t change our $ obsession. We still hoard money like a farmer does seed crops, but she did a lot of good work in lifting our better spirits with a soul of sunshine instead of the darker places and faces we are sometimes apt to follow
We have only seen two others like her since Sherman left: Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. And we thank God for all three.
Like the other two, her impact is in that global sphere, but what really lifted our spirits is that she had our southern spunk of honesty. When asked if she was a Republican or Democrat, she said, ‘most likely a hypocrite, but I do what I can do to lift people up and set an example to glorify him’.
Could we beam that message to three swollen men who say stay under the gun? Dolly’s style of leadership is universal and could make the world a better place.
Ask us or Jolene.
