08/25/2026
Dolly Parton died this morning in Nashville. She was 80.
We're a garden, not a music page, but we have a few things we need to say about Dolly.
Dolly was the fourth of twelve kids in a two-room cabin on Locust Ridge in Sevier County, Tennessee. No electricity or running water. Her daddy farmed land that belonged to somebody else, and he hunted and fished and canned, and that's how twelve children got fed.
She never prettied it up and she never apologized for it either.
She spent her entire adult life making the point that being poor and being worthless are two different things.
Long after she could've bought any life she wanted, she wrote for Guideposts that, "Even today, in these hard economic times, I think, well, if the worst happens and I lose everything, I can always go home to the mountains, plant a vegetable garden, maybe raise a few chickens. I’ll go back to God’s green earth and he’ll give me everything I need, just like he always has."
Us and our four chickens certainly believe her.
As we both face our own personal and private financial struggles, building this community garden that will eventually have enough organic and toxin-free produce to serve all the Brazos Valley brings such a peace of mind and hopefulness with it.
Maybe that's the peace that Dolly knew too. We'd like to think so.
Dolly Parton didn't believe in hoarding money either, especially when it comes to helping others.
When wildfires came through Sevier County in 2016, she sent $1,000 a month to every family that lost a home (around 900 of them) for six months; and when more donations came in than expected, she made the last check $5,000.
They weren't her kin, she said, but they were her people.
Same with her book program. Her father never learned to read, so she started mailing free books to kids in her home county. Not the ones who qualified. Every one of them.
Now, more than 3.5 million books go out every month to children in five different countries. A cumulative total of over 350 million books total.
She caught grief for her empathy and inclusiveness, too.
In 1991, a song of hers "Family" (one she later performed for an AIDS benefit concert) drew heat from some in country music at the time for lyrics about accepting and loving your gay relatives.
In 2005, she wrote the song "Travelin' Thru" for a movie called Transamerica (about a son bonding with his trans mother on a road trip), and she told USA Today that she received death threats for it.
Just two years ago, The Federalist accused her of not being an actual Christian because she encouraged acceptance of the LGBT community.
(By the way, the writer of that article apologized for having Dolly's name in her mouth once it received MASSIVE backlash.)
Asked to explain herself, she'd say she had enough sin of her own to keep up with without taking on the job of judging anybody else's, and that judging was its own sin anyway.
She'd keep the gate open at Dollywood for the church buses AND for the folks the church buses drove past. Her life's a reminder that community means everybody.
She paid attention to the living things around us that can't vote too. Dollywood's run an eagle sanctuary since 1991 that patches up injured birds and turns loose the ones that can fly again.
A few years back, the American Eagle Foundation added a rest stop for monarchs at Project Eagle in her honor.
She put her name on a whole pet-supply line for the sole purpose of making sure proceeds went to an animal rescue.
Oh, and she also wrote the anthem for everybody who's ever hated their job, on the set of a movie where the women win. For those of you with a crummy boss, we'd encourage you to watch "9 To 5" and see how 😋
We'd all do well to steal a few lessons from her:
Feed people without making them prove they earned it.
Keep the gate open to the neighbor you'd argue with.
Leave nature better than how you found it.
Rest easy, Dolly. We will always love you. 💚
When your gardener’s eye goes looking for well-manicured and thoughtfully-designed landscapes, even the master gardeners of Sevier County will recommend a day at Dollywood.
