08/26/2026
I had an encounter with Dolly in my thirties.
With having a pop single out in the nineties—I met so many celebrities.
I was at a little cocktail party and some celebrities were there.
Then I saw Dolly.
The record company executive I was with, brought me over to meet her.
“Hey Dolly,
I want you to meet someone.
This is Kathy Troccoli."
Before he got to finish she exclaimed,
"The gospel singer!?”
My heart just about exploded.
Then a warm hug and exchange.
There are some people whose lives are simply too large to fit inside the dates engraved on a stone.
Dolly Parton was one of those people.
How do you say goodbye to someone who somehow felt like she belonged to all of us?
For generations, Dolly walked into our lives through a song, a story, a laugh, a movie, a television screen—
and somehow, before we knew it, she felt like family.
She had that rare gift.
She could stand beneath the brightest lights in the world and still make you feel as though she were sitting beside you on the front porch.
She never seemed to forget where she came from. She carried the mountains of Tennessee with her wherever she went—the faith, the family, the poverty, the humor, the heartache, the music.
She took the little girl from a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains and allowed her to dream as big as she possibly could.
And then she spent a lifetime telling the rest of us that we could dream, too.
Dolly was unmistakable. The hair. The rhinestones. The heels. That wonderful laugh.
Beneath all that sparkle was something even more beautiful.
There was kindness.
There was humility.
There was generosity.
There was a woman who understood that the greatest thing you can do with a blessed life is use it to bless somebody else.
Thank you, Dolly.
We will always love you.
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