COREY STRONG

There are some people you admire without ever really knowing exactly why.

You just do.

Dolly Parton has always been one of those people for me.

Of course, there was the obvious. The hair. The rhinestones. The voice. The songs. The humor. That unmistakable personality that could fill a room before she even opened her mouth.

But underneath all of that was something I admired even more.

Dolly knew who she was.

And she never seemed interested in apologizing for it.

That matters to me.

Especially when you consider the industry she entered.

Dolly built her career in a male-dominated music business at a time when women were often expected to fit into whatever space had been created for them. She could have changed herself to make other people comfortable. She could have toned down the femininity, the humor, the clothes, the accent, the personality.

Instead, she became more Dolly.

And somehow, the very things people could have used to dismiss her became part of her power.

She was a songwriter. A businesswoman. An entertainer. A producer. An actress. A philanthropist. A woman who understood the value of her own work and knew how to build something from it.

I have always admired that.

Because staying true to yourself sounds easy until you actually have something to lose.

Dolly had plenty to lose.

Yet she kept choosing herself.

And then there was what she chose to do with everything she gained.

Dolly didn’t simply become successful and build a life around herself. She kept looking back toward people who didn’t have what she had.

Children who didn’t have books.

Families who needed help.

Communities recovering from disasters.

People who needed an opportunity.

Her Imagination Library is perhaps one of the clearest examples of that spirit. What began as an effort inspired by her father’s inability to read grew into a program that has provided free books to children around the world.

Think about that.

A woman who became famous for making music decided to use some of her success to make sure children had books.

That says a lot about a person.

Success can become a wall, or it can become a bridge.

Dolly built bridges.

And there is another part of her legacy that matters to me personally.

She understood that Black lives matter.

In 2020, during a year when America was confronting some painful truths about race, Dolly spoke publicly about the Black Lives Matter movement. She said she understood people wanting to make themselves “known and felt and seen,” and then made her position unmistakable: “Of course Black lives matter.”

That meant something to me.

Because Dolly came from a part of America and a musical tradition with a complicated history around race. She could have stayed quiet. She could have given some carefully worded statement that said nothing at all.

Instead, she spoke plainly.

And that fits with something else she said around that same time: there is such a thing as “innocent ignorance,” but once you realize something is a problem, you should fix it.

I respect that.

None of us gets everything right.

What matters is what we do when we realize we could do better.

Dolly seemed willing to listen, learn and make changes.

That kind of humility is rare, especially when you become powerful enough that you don’t technically have to listen to anybody.

Then, of course, there is Whitney.

If you know me, you already know where I’m going.

“I Will Always Love You.”

One of my favorite songs.

Dolly wrote it.

Dolly originally recorded it.

And then Whitney Houston took that song somewhere else entirely.

That song has always fascinated me because of the connection between these two women. Two extraordinary artists from very different musical worlds, permanently connected by a song about love, loss and letting go.

Dolly wrote the words.

Whitney gave them another life.

And Dolly celebrated that.

There is something beautiful about being secure enough in your own creation to watch somebody else take it somewhere you never imagined.

Whitney’s version became one of the most recognizable recordings in music history, but the song never stopped belonging to Dolly.

She wrote it.

She planted the seed.

Whitney helped it bloom into something millions of people would remember forever. Dolly’s songwriting and Whitney’s recording became inseparable parts of the song’s legacy.

That is another lesson in itself.

Sometimes somebody else can take something you created and make it bigger than you ever imagined.

That doesn’t diminish what you did.

It means your work had somewhere else to go.

And maybe that is what I keep coming back to when I think about Dolly.

Generosity.

Not just generosity with money.

Generosity with opportunity.

Generosity with creativity.

Generosity with laughter.

Generosity with herself.

She understood that getting to the top doesn’t mean much if you never reach back down.

She could have kept everything for herself.

Instead, she kept finding ways to put something back into the world.

Books.

Music.

Jobs.

Scholarships.

Disaster relief.

Opportunity.

Hope.

And perhaps most importantly, permission.

Permission to be exactly who you are.

I think that is why Dolly’s legacy reaches far beyond country music.

She showed women that femininity and strength could exist in the same person.

She showed people that you could come from humble beginnings without being ashamed of where you came from.

She showed artists that success didn’t require abandoning yourself.

And she showed people with resources that having more gives you an opportunity to do more for somebody else.

That last part may be what I admire most.

Dolly didn’t just want to be remembered for what she accumulated.

She wanted to be remembered for what she contributed.

Today, I find myself thinking about the woman underneath all of it.

The little girl from Tennessee.

The songwriter.

The businesswoman.

The entertainer.

The humanitarian.

The woman who wrote a song that would eventually be carried around the world in Whitney Houston’s voice.

The woman who publicly said Black lives matter.

The woman who used her success to put books into the hands of children who might otherwise never have had them.

The woman who stayed unmistakably herself in an industry that spent decades telling women what they should look like, sound like and become.

That is the Dolly I want to remember.

Not simply the woman with the big hair and rhinestones.

Not simply the country music legend.

Not simply the celebrity.

But the woman who understood that influence is a responsibility.

Dolly Parton died today at 80, leaving behind a career that stretched across more than six decades and a legacy that reaches well beyond music.

And perhaps that is the greatest thing any of us can leave behind.

Not just proof that we were here.

Proof that somebody else’s life was better because we were.

So thank you, Dolly.

For the songs.

For the books.

For the laughter.

For the generosity.

For the courage to remain yourself.

For reminding women that strength doesn’t always have to look hard.

For reminding successful people to reach back.

For understanding that being seen is important, and that other people deserve to be seen too.

And for giving us a song that, through Whitney Houston, became part of the soundtrack of so many lives.

You were one of one, Dolly.

And there will never be another you.

Rest well, Dolly Parton.

You gave the world quite a lot to remember.