I'm heartbroken to announce that Dolly Parton has died today. I loved Dolly a lot; not in the way you love a celebrity. In the way you love someone who showed you the kind of person it's possible to be.
I think a lot about her "Coat of Many Colors." Her mother sewed her a coat out of rags and, as she stitched, told her about Joseph and his coat. Dolly went to school feeling like a Bible hero. The other children laughed at her. She never forgot what it feels like to be mocked for the thing you were told was sacred, and she spent her whole life refusing to let anyone else feel small. It always felt like such a relatable story.
And that's not the only thing that made her relatable. The man who made her a global star was Sandy Gallin, a Jewish kid from Brooklyn. He convinced her to record "Here You Come Again," written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. He talked her into building Dollywood. They shared an apartment in New York. When he died, she said nobody could understand how the Christian Southern girl and the New York Jewish boy had so much in common. She showed me that people can overcome seemingly insurmountable differences by finding commonality.
A Baptist girl from the Smoky Mountains who never stopped believing people from different worlds could love each other. That's who we lost today.
Rest easy, Dolly. Thank you for everything. 💔