Dolly Parton: Resquiescat in Pace
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
I hope Dolly Parton rests in peace. She was born and raised as a Pentecostal in the Church of God (one of four main Pentecostal denominations, the others being Assemblies of God, Pentecostal Holiness, and Church of the Foursquare Gospel). She wasn’t very religious in her lifetime (stating that she had faith in herself and her friends), and while she married (staying with the same man for all her life), they never had any children. She said that she wanted to devote her life to making other children happy and if she had had children of her own, then she would have had no time for that. Her songs were invariably as uplifting and clean-minded as the movies in which she starred. Whatever politics she had apparently she kept to herself. She never cheated on her husband, and she never did any of that trampy modeling that so many famous women with her buxom assets would normally do. Overall, she was a good woman and she made a great many people very happy (myself included). I can only hope and pray that she now rests in the peace of Christ and makes it into heaven.
strangely, yesterday.. the day she died.. i had a thought of her not knowing she had died..
in an interview she was asked why she fell in love and married her husband (m.1966 ; died 2025). she said “he looked me in the eyes.. he paid attention to me.. he loved me..”
in this age of objectifying women, no truer words were ever spoken.
Another example of her magnaminity: when she broke away professionally from Porter Wagoner (she wrote “I Will Always Love You” on that occasion) Porter sued her for over $1 million and trash talked her for years, but when Porter fell on hard times, Dolly purchased his music business to satisfy his tax debts, then gave it back to him. There is a beautiful video on You Tube of Dolly singing “I Will Always Love You” to Porter at his last Grand Ole Opry appearance in 2007.
A real woman!!!
“…two hundred million books to children…”
Dolly’s cover of the Led Zeppelin classic Stairway to Heaven is a classic in its own right.
https://youtu.be/YhTvxVxXJLQ?is=dsNrrkw_sepWvvHB