Staff Reports
Dolly Parton died this week at 80 after what her publicist called a brief battle with cancer. She passed at a Nashville hospital surrounded by loved ones. President Trump ordered flags lowered to half-staff, and the country has been remembering a life that reached far beyond a single stage or town. This moment calls for more than tweets and grief — it calls for a plain, public answer: Tennessee should put Dolly on a pedestal she refused while alive.
Why Tennessee should build a Dolly Parton statue
Dolly Parton’s death is not just the loss of a singer. It is the loss of a builder. She wrote songs that belong to America — “I Will Always Love You,” “Jolene,” “9 to 5” — and she won multiple Grammys for them. But her legacy runs deeper: she built institutions and jobs, and she gave readers to children who otherwise might not have had books. A state that honors its best should honor what she made and what she gave away.
More than music: Dollywood, jobs, and the Imagination Library
Dollywood turned a poor stretch of East Tennessee into a thriving tourist corridor. The park employs roughly four thousand people and helped lift Sevier County into the top ranks for tourism revenue in the state. Her Imagination Library has mailed hundreds of millions of books to children in several countries. That is a monument you can touch, feel, and count — not bronze, but better: paychecks, literacy, and a future for kids who otherwise would fall behind.
Humility was hers. The monument is ours.
Dolly famously refused big honors while she was alive. She turned down the Presidential Medal of Freedom more than once and asked Tennessee to hold off on a Capitol statue in 2021, saying “Given all that is going on in the world, I don’t think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time.” Fine — humility was her whole thing. But humility doesn’t forbid a grateful people from remembering. She even said a statue could wait “after I’m gone.” She’s gone now.
Tennessee lawmakers and leaders should stop arguing about permission and do the work of memory. Put a statue in the Capitol. Name a library. Make a permanent place where school kids can point and say who built a better Tennessee. We build monuments to remind ourselves who we were at our best. Dolly Parton was that best. If the state ever needed a plain, civic answer to a plain, civic debt, this is it. Build Dolly Parton’s statue — not for her modesty, but for everyone she lifted up.
