Dolly Parton died today, and pretty much everyone is mourning her. I was never a huge fan, but I held her in a lot of respect for the work she did fighting poverty and helping people in poverty get an education.
Over on Reddit, someone not from the US asked what Parton did that made her, in his words, a saint.
The first comment gives a list:
She is the founder of Dollywood, which is an amusement park that helped turn her hometown of Sevierville, TN from a small extremely poor town to a built up city with a large tourism economy. Dollywood pays a living wage to employees and covers full tuition, books, and fees for employees who want to attend college. She is one of the largest and best paying employers in that area, and the overall economy has grown immensely due to her efforts.
She founded the Dollywood Foundation and other scholarship efforts to improve high school graduation rates and help kids from Sevierville attend college.
She runs a large number of other charity projects, including an animal sanctuary. She runs a program called Dolly Parton's Imagination Library that sends free books to children.
She has donated a huge amount of money to disaster relief and children's hospitals. East TN Children's Hospital is now renamed as The Dolly Parton Children's Hospital in her honor. She's also made large donations to Vanderbilt for children's medical research, children's medical care, and COVID research. She has made a large donation to the Salvation Army as well.
She has a reputation for being kind, easy to work with, cool under pressure, and fair. She's been married to one man for her entire career and has no personal or political scandals. The only things she is known for are her musical career, her philanthropy, and her personal image. Her charity work is focused on universally beloved causes, not political campaigns or pet projects. She got a lot of heat for her image and background early in her career and she handled it with am immense amount of poise and grace. Her early interviews are pretty much a masterclass in how to address backhanded complements and rude comments with dignity.
No comments:
Post a Comment