Editor’s Notes: Parton brought light to the world
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At the beginning of this week, I planned to write about the Appalachian Regional Commission's release of this year's Chartbook -- particularly its "Classifying Economic Distress in Appalachian Counties" section.
If you want to dig deeply into that, I encourage you to start here: https://tinyurl.com/kzuc6j6m
But my focus shifted Tuesday.
The newsroom went unusually quiet for a little while after we learned Dolly Parton had died. Things felt a little darker, a little heavier. Then the babbling started, ranging from "I'm old enough to remember when she was performing with Porter Wagoner," to snippets of "9 to 5," or memories of trips to Dollywood.
Dolly was a light for an unfathomable number of people. Many of those people expressed on social media their grief and disbelief that she was gone.
I shouldn't have been surprised -- but I was -- when a few filthy politicians and public figures could not contain their glee as they made incredibly awkward attempts to turn so much that was good about Dolly into negatives, because they believed it would appeal to their supporters.
From her decision to do something while everyone else was talking, and fund research that eventually led to one of the vaccines that helped us pull us out of the COVID-19 pandemic, to her own common sense and decent approach to love everyone, those people revealed there were no depths to which they were afraid to sink in showing us they preferred the dark over her light.
"I think we should be accepting and loving," Dolly once said. "We are all God's children. We are who we are, and we should be allowed to be who we are."
Regarding the disappointingly rare mindset that once you learn better, you need to do better, Dolly patiently -- if colorfully -- explained her choice to remove a word that was hurtful because of its Confederate connotations from a Dollywood attraction.
"As soon as you realize that [something] is a problem, you should fix it. Don't be a dumb**s. That's where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose."
Imagine being so fragile that memories of a woman who made her way through the world like THAT was a threat that needed to be deflected publicly and hatefully.
My dad was a Dolly Parton fan. He applauded her Imagination Library. I remember him saying to me "Hey, take a wild guess who's funding the vaccine research!" (She had given about $1 million to university research that developed into the Moderna vaccine, and she was a vocal advocate for it.)
The Moderna vaccine received approval in December 2020. Dad died a few weeks later; and in his briefcase we found a printout of an editorial he'd been working on about the hope offered for families because a vaccine against that plague was on its way.
All of that came whooshing down on me like a ton of bricks when a reporter told me Dolly was gone. Grief is weird.
And what hit me was that this woman, who MY dad thought more of as a philanthropist and community developer than as a singer, songwriter, musician and actress, was gone now, too.
It felt for a second as though a lot of lights have been going out, and it's hard to know where to look for more.
But the ARC county map was still up on my screen. My eyes fell on east Tennessee, where Sevier County (home of Pigeon Forge) is classified as transitional (coming out of distress), and two neighboring counties, Blount and Knox, are classified as competitive.
Not all is rosy there, but an enormous amount of the credit for lifting those communities goes to Dolly, who COULD have been a billionaire, but decided instead to invest in her people, in the communities around where she grew up, in Tennessee -- and later, in families all over the world with her literacy projects and her support of medical research.
When you look at Appalachian Tennessee compared with the counties in Kentucky and West Virginia, it has to make you wonder what things would be like if fewer people there were afraid of the light -- if they stopped looking backward and started leading forward.
We can't do much about them -- other than vote with our ballots, our social media support or our money -- but we can control how WE react to the loss of a light like Dolly's.
It may be enough to drive you crazy, if you let it.
But just remember how hard she tried to ignite that same spark in all of us; and (forgive me) maybe now the tide's gonna turn and it's all gonna roll your way.
Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com.