Raymond J. de Souza: Dolly Parton, the ‘songteller,’ had a heart as big as her fame

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“She’s a woman/ she knows how to dish it out or take it all,” Dolly wrote, as much about herself as her role. “Her heart’s as soft as feathers, still she weathers stormy skies/ And she’s a sparrow when she’s broken/ But she’s an eagle when she flies.”

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“Gentle as the sweet magnolia, strong as steel her faith and pride/ She hurts deep, and when she weeps, she’s just as fragile as a child … Oh, bless her, Lord.”

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The screenplay for Steel Magnolias allowed Dolly’s character — Truvy Jones, the hairdresser who owned her own beauty parlour — to speak as Dolly, the storyteller.

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“There is no such thing as natural beauty,” Truvy declares in her salon, where women share burdens, wisdom and gossip.

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“Laughter through tears is my favourite emotion,” Truvy says, explaining many of Dolly’s greatest hits. “I really wish I had some words of wisdom but I don’t so why don’t just focus on the joy of the situation.”

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Or put more directly: “I have a strict policy that no one cries alone in my presence.” When Dolly sang sad songs, it was so that others might be a little less sad.

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Forty years ago, Dolly opened the Dollywood amusement park in the marvellously monikered Pigeon Forge, Tenn., in her native Sevier County and near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Dollywood was the flagship enterprise of the Dolly Parton business empire, making her one of her generation’s most successful women entrepreneurs.

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With her profits she pioneered a different kind of philanthropy, in addition to the usual things rich people do, like donating to the children’s hospital in Knoxville, Tenn., which bears her name after an undisclosed “generational” contribution.

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Ten years ago, she sent $1,000 cheques for six months to families in Sevier County who lost their homes in the Smoky Mountains wildfires in 2016.

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Growing up one of 12 children to a hard-working, creative but illiterate father, Dolly started the Imagination Library 30 years ago, sending free books to families in Sevier County — one book a month from birth to six years old. The Imagination Library, now in partnerships across the U.S. and abroad, including in Canada, has sent more than 322 million books to young children. Songtellers first need to read stories before they can write their own.

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When Taylor Swift was looking for a philanthropic dimension to her summer wedding last month, she gave $2 million to the Imagination Library.

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At Dollywood there is a pavilion for bald eagles that cannot live in the wild due to injury or disability. At daily exhibitions, visitors can witness the beauty and majesty of birds which would otherwise be overlooked, beaten down by life, hidden away in the hollers.

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Broken like sparrows, the eagles have a place at Dollywood, and in Dolly’s heart, which was the biggest thing about her.

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National Post

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