Some stars belong to a genre. Some belong to a generation.
Dolly Parton belonged to all of us.
Parton, the unmistakable voice behind “Jolene,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You,” died Tuesday at the age of 80, closing an extraordinary life that carried her from a one-room cabin in the mountains of Tennessee to stages around the world.
She became one of the greatest songwriters country music has ever produced. But somewhere along the way, Dolly became something bigger than country music.
She became part of America.
There was the hair, the rhinestones and that wonderfully self-aware sense of humor. Dolly could tell the joke before anyone else had the chance—and usually tell it better.
Behind all of it, though, was an uncommon generosity.
Her Imagination Library, inspired in part by her father’s inability to read and write, grew from a small Tennessee literacy program into an international effort that has put hundreds of millions of books into the hands of children.
It was quintessentially Dolly: enormously ambitious and remarkably simple.
Give kids books. Give people a chance. Be kind.
She spent decades singing about heartbreak, poverty, working women, love and the complicated lives of ordinary people because those were lives she understood. Fame never seemed to erase the little girl who grew up as one of 12 children in the Smoky Mountains.
Perhaps that’s why losing Dolly feels different.
For all the division of modern American life, Dolly Parton remained one of the increasingly rare people nearly everyone seemed happy to claim as their own. Country fans loved her. Pop fans loved her. Grandparents loved her. Their grandchildren did, too.
She somehow managed to become larger than life without ever seeming above anyone.
The rhinestones will remain in museums. The songs will play for generations. Somewhere tonight, someone will hear Whitney Houston sing “I Will Always Love You” and perhaps remember that those extraordinary words began with a young songwriter from Tennessee named Dolly Parton.
And somewhere else, a child will open a book that arrived at their home because Dolly believed that child deserved one.
For a woman who spent a lifetime writing unforgettable endings, perhaps that’s the most fitting one.
Goodbye, Dolly.
And thank you for leaving the world a little kinder than you found it.
