At Dollywood, I discovered the real reason she is America’s sweetheart

Dollywood, Tennessee: When Sabrina Taylor’s property burnt down in the devastating 2016 wildfires that ripped through Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, Dolly Parton came to the rescue.

Not only did the country music icon contribute to a program that dispensed $US5000 ($6900) a month to fire victims who lost their homes, but Parton also helped find Taylor somewhere to live in the interim.

“I got to stay in her best friend Judy Ogle’s home here,” Taylor says in her southern drawl. “She relocated myself and two other people that I know, let me stay there until I found other lodgings. That was a very private memory … People wouldn’t really know that she would do stuff like that.”

Taylor spent Wednesday (US time) at Dollywood, the Dolly Parton theme park near her childhood home in east Tennessee. She was with three other Dolly superfans: Cody Dobbs, Jonathan Brashier and Aaron Hamby, all of whom found community here.

What they all agreed was that Parton, who died this week at the age of 80, was much more than a musician. In her death, their overriding memory was about her generosity – of spirit and of dollar. A woman who could have been a billionaire but ultimately gave away an estimated $US600 million to all manner of charitable causes.

The group has friends from all over the world through the Dollywood fan club, including Australia. Brashier, who is from South Carolina, says they have never missed a year. He has met her many times.

“Yesterday, when I was at home, sitting in my den grieving after this news broke, I found the very first picture I had with her,” Brashier says. “It was at the bottom of the steps of her apartment at the time. I was just this little skinhead, snaggle-tooth kid. I think I was 11.

“I’ll tell you this – the very next year, she remembered me. A very beautiful fan friendship just blossomed from then over the years. There is nothing like having a moment with her.”

It’s at that point that Brashier’s voice starts to break as he fights back tears. It is slightly jarring to see an adult man vulnerable in this way, and yet it is difficult not to share his emotion.

“There is something magical about her that you have to experience, that you can’t really explain,” he says. “She makes you feel like you’re the only person in the room when she’s talking to you.

“That is something that I never outgrew in my life, even when I was with her just a couple of years ago. I still get nervous; I still get the butterflies. But she didn’t know she made you nervous. It’s just something that happened. And it’s something that I will hang on to for the rest of my life.”

The four friends were among many Americans who felt compelled to travel to Dollywood on Wednesday to pay their respects to the undisputed queen of country music.

Overall, it was a modest day for foot traffic. Tennessee schools have returned from summer break, and Dollywood is decidedly a family affair. But they are gearing up for a massive weekend ahead.

The sheer size of Dollywood is a testament to her cultural power. First opened in 1986, it occupies 462 hectares of land within the Smoky Mountains range, with only 73 hectares of that developed so far.

“We have lots of room to grow,” says Dollywood president Eugene Naughton. “This is the second love of her life. She loved the mountains. She loved this place.”

‘We are all heartbroken’

Parton’s passing weighed heavily on the staff, though they were determined to stay open, as was apparently her wish. Naughton called her their “dreamer-in-chief”. Another staffer told me: “We are all heartbroken.”

Dollywood contains a replica of her childhood home, which is located just a few kilometres away in Locust Ridge, just outside Sevierville. A modest, one-bedroom log cabin, it is the cornerstone of her well-known rags-to-riches story.

In many ways, that makes her a quintessential American icon: someone who harnessed talent and persistence to make it big and strike it rich. And yet, that is not Dolly Parton’s legacy at all. Almost everyone I spoke to over the past 24 hours in Tennessee mentioned her selflessness, grace and charity as her defining features.

Central Sevierville, in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, is home to a Dolly Parton statue. It stands proudly just outside the local courthouse, in the middle of a town that is utterly devoted to its most famous daughter.

Just before dusk on Wednesday, about 80 people at any one time stood around the statue, laying flowers, taking photographs, paying their respects. It was not a solemn occasion; she had led a good, long life, and that was understood.

Some people brought along old Dolly records. One child, Charlie, laid down a handmade painting of a cowgirl’s boot with flowers springing from it. Like many children here, she grew up reading books from Parton’s Imagination Library. Her favourite song is Coat of Many Colours. “I know every word,” she says.

“We’re huge fans of Dolly,” says Charlie’s mum, Tori King. “She’s just always been so generous and so kind. The first time I heard her songs was on my grandmother’s cassette [player] – she’s just always been a big part of our lives.”

There is also something exceptionally southern about Dolly Parton: something you would not find in someone from Los Angeles, New York or Chicago. So affirms Heather Hutcheson of Knoxville, who laid a few seashells beside the Dolly Parton statue on Wednesday evening.

“Just her generosity and her southern sweetness, and her big beautiful heart,” Hutcheson says. “She is the patron saint of east Tennessee. She basically raised all of us, right? It should be a day of mourning, today – everything should be closed down. We should go surfing in Australia today.”

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