The feeling of losing my Aunt Dolly is beyond what feels right to share. Our most sacred moments were private and they’ll stay there behind the stage, beneath the glamour & between our hearts.
What I KNOW is Dolly would want me to feel it, write a song about it, and then continue on and be strong. I have an angel by my side. I always have. One of our last conversations was about music and metamorphosis. 🦋
I will always love her and want to make her proud. My heart breaks for the world, her family and friends who will miss her deeply. We’re in this loss together and we will see her in all of the most beautiful things. 💖 @dollyparton
They're like distant family members to me that I've never met in person but I love to look them up every month to see what good things have happened to them
i think about this video of Andrew talking about Zendaya every now and then cuz like what does he mean by saying “She’s kind of got one hand in the heavens and one hand down in the centre of the earth” 😭
if someone was this poetic when describing me i’d be so insufferable
In 1988 Dolly Parton pulled every 7th and 8th grader in Sevier County into a room and told them to pick a buddy.
She made them sign a contract.. if BOTH graduate, she hands you both $500. One fails, nobody gets paid.
The county dropout rate went from 35% to 6%.
She handed out the checks herself.
In 1989 she offered $500 to every kid in the county who wanted to go to the local college.
When Gatlinburg burned in 2016, she sent 900 families $1,000 a month for six months.
You've probably heard that part.
Here's the part you haven't:
The fund raised more than expected, so she showed up in May and handed every one of those families another $5,000 on top.
Then she quietly put $3 million into the recovery group that handles the years after the news trucks leave.
She built her county an entire hospital.
She played a benefit concert in 2007, Dollywood and the Stampede matched it, and LeConte Medical Center opened in 2010 with a birthing unit and a women's center in it.
In 2022 she started covering 100% of tuition, books, and fees for Dollywood employees.
Full-time, part-time, AND seasonal.
In 1991 she paid for a bald eagle sanctuary because the birds couldn't be released back into the wild, no press release.
And when Hurricane Helene came through here in Western North Carolina, she wrote a personal check for $1 million and her companies matched it.
She didn't owe North Carolina anything, but she helped us anyway.
She started the Imagination Library because her daddy couldn't read or write. Before he passed, he told her it was the most important thing she ever did.
Rest in Peace, Dolly 🇺🇸
Dolly Parton casi chocó su automóvil la primera vez que escuchó a Whitney Houston cantar “I Will Always Love You”.
La canción había nacido casi 20 años antes, cuando Dolly decidió separarse profesionalmente de Porter Wagoner, el hombre que había impulsado su carrera.
Como él se negaba a dejarla marchar, ella escribió una despedida y se la cantó.
Porter terminó llorando.
Tiempo después, Elvis Presley quiso grabarla. Para Dolly era un sueño, hasta que su representante le exigió entregar la mitad de los derechos de autor. Aunque necesitaba el dinero, se negó.
Aquella decisión cambió su vida.
En 1992, Kevin Costner eligió la canción para “The Bodyguard” y Whitney Houston la convirtió en un fenómeno mundial. Dolly escuchó la versión por primera vez mientras conducía y tuvo que detenerse: estaba tan emocionada que temió sufrir un accidente.
“Tomó mi pequeña canción y la convirtió en algo enorme”, recordaría después.
La versión le generó cerca de 10 millones de dólares en regalías. Dolly invirtió parte de ese dinero en un complejo de oficinas situado en un barrio históricamente afroamericano de Nashville.
Lo llamó «la casa que Whitney construyó».
Dolly escribió la canción. Whitney la hizo volar. Y entre las dos crearon una despedida que el mundo nunca pudo olvidar.
Ahora las dos nos han dejado, pero juntas hicieron que una canción de despedida se volviera eterna.
Rest in peace, Dolly Parton (1946–2026) 💔
I don’t even know how to put this into words. We lost one of the true greats today, not just in country music, but in music, period. Dolly Parton was a songwriter, a singer, an actress, a businesswoman, a philanthropist, and one of the kindest hearts this industry has ever seen.
“Jolene.” “9 to 5.” “Coat of Many Colors.” “I Will Always Love You.” These aren’t just songs, they’re pieces of all our lives because we grew up listening to them. Dolly wrote music that crossed generations, crossed genres, crossed borders. And beyond the stage, through the Imagination Library, she put books into the hands of millions of kids and changed lives in ways most artists never even attempt.
There will never be another Dolly. The rhinestones may have stopped shining today, but her music, her humor, her heart, those infectious attributes of hers aren’t going anywhere. She will shine forever.
I think this incredible tribute by @Pink captures the greatness of Dolly’s life!
Rest easy, Dolly. Thank you for the songs, the laughs, the memories, and everything you gave the world. ❤️🕊️
#DollyParton #RIPDollyParton
Fun fact: Dolly Parton used the royalties from Whitney Houston’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You” to support a Black neighborhood, and support Black owned businesses.
"I bought my big office complex down in Nashville. So I thought, 'Well, this is a wonderful place to be,'" Parton said. "I bought a property down in what was the Black area of town, and it was mostly just Black families and people that lived around there. It was off the beaten path from 16th Avenue and I thought, 'Well, I am gonna buy this place — the whole strip mall.' And I thought, 'This is the perfect place for me to be,' considering it was Whitney. I thought this was great — I'm just gonna be down here with her people, who are my people as well," she continued. "So I just love the fact that I spent that money on a complex and I think, 'This is the house that Whitney built.' "
“I didn’t have children because I believed that God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine, so I could do things like Imagination Library, because if I hadn’t had the freedom to work, I wouldn’t have done all the things I’ve done."
Taylor Swift pays tribute to Dolly Parton:
“A world without Dolly doesn’t feel possible, real, or right. But because of the eternally generous way she spent her time on this earth and the countless lives she changed for the better, her legacy will be an everlasting one. She was truly the gift that kept on giving. Dolly gave us someone to look up to while encouraging us to be who we are as individuals. Somehow she was able to give us her lessons about the world gently and honestly, simultaneously, and oftentimes hilariously. She managed to give the world the ultimate mystery and fantasy in some corners of her life, but to give full transparency in the ways that counted. Somehow she was true grace and true grit, all in one dazzling person. She possessed the softest heart when it came to the struggles of others, and a backbone of steel to defend her own self worth as an artist. Along with her other fans, I am so grateful for all of it. For the melodies and lyrics she wrote that thawed even the coldest hearts. For the millions of books she provided children all over the world so that they might fall in love with stories the way she did. For the tightropes she walked so that young girls like me could grow up dreaming of joining the circus too.
Dolly, I’ll think of you each step of the way.”
Sabrina Carpenter pens tribute to the late Dolly Parton:
“the only thing i could say after we first met was "she really is an angel walking the earth" and “we look like we could be sisters!"
i will cherish our laughter and conversations and i will keep your wisdom, your playful outlook on life, and perfect sense of humor in my pocket for the rainy days. there will never be another you and how lucky are we all to have experienced your singular magic as well as your once in a lifetime voice, songs, and heart. your light will be something the world will search forever to find again, i will always love you”
The doctor who delivered Dolly Parton in a one-room Tennessee cabin in 1946 was paid with a sack of cornmeal. Her father farmed other people's land and could not read or write. Eighty years later, the reading program she built in his name has mailed more than 300 million books.
She wrote "I Will Always Love You" on the same afternoon she wrote "Jolene," as a goodbye to Porter Wagoner, and released it in 1974. Elvis wanted it. The night before the session, Colonel Tom Parker called and said Presley would only record it if they got half the publishing, meaning half of everything the song ever earned. She had been in Nashville ten years by then. She said no, and cried all night. Whitney Houston cut her version in 1992, held number one for fourteen weeks, and Forbes later put Parton's royalties from it near $10 million. She put some of that money into an office complex in Nashville and called the place the house that Whitney built.
Dollywood opened in Pigeon Forge in 1986 because she wanted paychecks in the county she came from. Around 4,000 people work there now. Three million visitors come every year. The University of Tennessee put its economic impact at $1.8 billion, and it is the largest employer in Sevier County. Since 2022 the company has paid tuition, fees, and books in full for every worker from their first day, seasonal hires included.
Wildfires tore through those mountains in November 2016, killing fourteen people and destroying more than 2,400 buildings. Her foundation was handing out money within 48 hours. Every family that lost a home got $1,000 a month for six months, regardless of income. The final check was $5,000. Total delivered: $8.9 million.
In April 2020 she sent $1 million to Vanderbilt for coronavirus research. When Moderna's vaccine results ran in the New England Journal of Medicine that November, her fund appeared in the footnotes.
Carl Dean, her husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025. The note she wrote to fans afterward ended with the same five words she wrote for Porter Wagoner back in 1974. She died in Nashville today. Her family asked that instead of flowers, people give to the Imagination Library, which still mails 3.4 million books a month to children who will never get to meet her.
My 7-year-old daughter heard me say that Dolly Parton died, and got visibly very sad. I was surprised she even knew that name.
“You know Dolly Parton?”
In the sweetest timid voice, she replied:
“Well, I don’t _know_ know her. But she sent me books.”
🥹😢😭