Kindness Counts
It’s been interesting to see the public discourse around Dolly Parton’s death. As much as people are lamenting the loss of a great songwriter – she wrote around 3,000! – they’re mostly speaking about her kindness and lamenting how we lost someone almost saintly.
She said in a personal interview with a Time magazine journalist and podcaster, “I just love people. When I look at the audience I see my family. I see the God light, the goodness, in everybody, even if they can’t see it.” And that sentiment showed.
It showed in her attitude and actions surrounding all the marginalized groups. In a 2020 interview, she said, “I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen. And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” And regarding queer people, in 2014, she told Billboard: “They know that I completely love and accept them, as I do all people. I’ve struggled enough in my life to be appreciated and understood. I’ve had to go against all kinds of people through the years just to be myself. I think everybody should be allowed to be who they are, and to love who they love. I don’t think we should be judgmental. Lord, I’ve got enough problems of my own to pass judgment on somebody else.”
And in 2024, she told Absolute Radio Country, “I love and care about people for who they are and for who they are to me. And believe me, like I say in my own immediate family, and my circle of employees: I’ve got gays, I’ve got lesbians, I’ve got drag queens, I’ve got transgenders, some of everything in my own family. I just enjoy people for who and what they are.”
She could have stopped there – said some quotable things – but Dolly put her money where her mouth was. This woman could have been a billionaire but she wasn’t because she gave so much of her money away.
Her father never learned to read or write, and in response, she provided $15,000 scholarships to high school students. To improve middle school literacy rates in her home county, she gave each child $500 in cash upon graduation. In 1995, she started the Imagination Library, which donates books to children under 5. She invested proceeds from Whitney Houston’s 1992 cover of “I Will Always Love You” into a Black Tennessean community.
When the Gatlinburg fires broke out across Appalachia in 2016, she raised millions of dollars and gave everyone who lost a home $1,000 a month for six months with a final surprise $5,000 check as the program wound down. She made a significant donation in 2024 to support the victims of Hurricane Helene. In 2020, she donated $1 million toward finding a vaccine for COVID, and in 2022, she began offering full college scholarships to every Dollywood employee.
Dolly Parton was loved because she loved. Whereas some people are so greedy that they only care about amassing wealth, Dolly cared about people. And upon her death, the internet is ablaze with tributes. There’s a quote that says, “When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.” That’s certainly true with Dolly. And for those of us still living, she offers a model of how to be. She shows that as much as divisiveness and discord seem to rule the day, kindness still counts and kindness will be remembered long after we’re gone.
I dream of a world where we understand fame and fortune are all well and good (or can be), but ultimately what matters is how we treat people. A world where we understand it’s the acts of kindness that leave a lasting impression. A world where we take a page from Dolly Parton’s book. A world where we remember kindness counts.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
