Lesson 22: How to face your grief and find your way forward - the Dolly Parton way
It must not be easy living life as an icon.
Sure, there are perks. Someone else handles the tiresome stuff like unloading the dishwasher or paying the bills or parking the car at Walmart… or going to Walmart for that matter. Icons skip the line at the TSA check-in, never have to wait on hold, and best of all, never have to explain themselves to anyone - ever.
But being an icon very clearly has its dark side, and proof of that can be found in so many graveyards - the final periods on the end of the final sentences about lives with a dazzling public side and a tragic secret side to match.
At birth, they are just like you and me - unsuspecting, hungry for love. But unlike you and me, they have a special something - a talent, a gift, or calling, etc. - that makes them famous and, therefore, different and, therefore, separate. That something special seems to offer love from every direction, but little do they know it’s love with an IV drip of poison. Fame, power, and privilege grow to the point it overtakes them. Like toddlers playing in the surf who get pulled under by a rogue wave, the poor things never even saw it coming.
JFK, Judy Garland, Elvis, Marilyn, Princess Diana, Michael Jackson. All modern icons. All tragic. All hoisted high on the shoulders of adoring fans who then were shocked to find out that their icons were frail and flawed. Years after their deaths, we’re still sifting through the rubble asking - where did it all go wrong?
Covering Dolly Parton for local news over so many years gave me a chance to see her morph from a famous person into a global icon, and I got a chance to ponder why, even though so many icons don’t survive to advanced years, she’s not just survived but thrived.
Here’s my working theory.
By definition, an icon is a symbol, a created image of something transcendent of the frailty of human flesh and bones. Icons, therefore, are “dehumanized humans” if you will who, by achieving greatness, bypass life’s friction points (the dishwasher, TSA, Walmart, etc.) but also become isolated and alone. So, when they encounter real problems and real pain and real needs - in other words, when they have to live everyday life - they’re so detached from everyday life that they no longer know how to handle everyday life when it hurts. Imprisoned by their own fame, they’re forced to face life’s rawness separate from the rest of us. In so many ways, icons are kind of doomed.
The day after my Momma died, I wiped the snot off my nose long enough to go to the grocery store to buy a Peppermint Patty (her favorite candy). It was my therapy, and for a few minutes, I felt ok. When I got back in the car and looked at myself in the rear-view mirror, I realized what everyone else had just seen - an unshaven, unbathed, unkempt middle-aged man with swollen eyes ringed by dark circles wearing wrinkled and stained clothes that looked like something harvested from a dumpster.
I could do that and not care one bit because - great news - no one else cared either! But icons can’t do that. Paparazzi cameras would be there to immortalize it if they did. The only lens pointed at me was maybe a hidden grocery store security camera with some guy monitoring the feed and wondering if he should call the cops.
Icons live golden lives until the bad things happen. Then the gold often begins to tarnish.
But sometimes, an icon takes a different path. On rare occasions, they find a way to balance the perks and the pains. The fame and glory that remove their ability to have the standard, sometimes horrendous experience of being a human become tools instead of traps. And when the hard times come, they survive. When the rogue wave hits, they know how to swim.
Maybe it’s a circle of friends. Maybe it’s their faith. Maybe it’s simply the fact that they never forgot the truth - that, no matter how special other people see you, at the end of the day you’re just like everyone else.
On March 3, 2025, Dolly Parton - an indisputable global icon - announced via social media that Carl Thomas Dean, her husband of 60 years, had died after a long illness. I’d heard whispers that he was sick. Here in East Tennessee, people who knew people were hinting that, privately, Dolly was clearing her schedule as much as possible so she could be by his side.
In years of covering Dolly for local news, I’d never seen Carl Dean. Neither had almost anyone else for that matter. Theirs was, to be sure, an unusual arrangement, so it became a frequent fascination for the tabloid press. From time to time, she’d tell inquiring interviewers that it was simple - Carl disliked the cameras and flashing lights that followed his wife, so while she was on the road, he stayed home. I couldn’t help but notice that she always said it with a look on her face that made it clear - ‘we’re good, and that should be good enough for everyone else.’
But at times, it wasn’t. Reporters, especially the tabloid variety, often wrote of Dolly’s “mystery husband” - the man she met at a laundromat the day she moved from Sevier County, Tennessee, to Nashville. Inquiring minds wanted to know…why were they never seen together? Why didn’t he travel with her when she toured? What really happened when she was on the road and he was back at home (wink, wink)?
Surely, Dolly faced pressure, especially in the early days of her career, when social norms required women to submit while their husbands built careers. As her public persona became increasingly defined by her physical appearance and comically flirtatious ways, we can only assume that there were moments when the demands of her career easily could have forced them to put demands on each other.
But as far as anyone can tell, Dolly and Carl Dean never budged. He let her live her life, and she let him live his. Parton recently repeated the jaw-dropping story that Dean would sometimes anonymously visit Dollywood, waiting in lines anonymously, side by side with visitors who didn’t have a clue it was him." He bought his own ticket – stood in line and got his ticket,” she told the KnoxNews.com. “He didn't want somebody givin’ him a ticket 'cause he was Dolly's husband.”
When I heard that Carl Dean had died, I, like everyone, wondered - what will happen next? It’s a fair question when anyone loses a life-long partner at the age of 79. Would the sadness be too much? Would we see less of the grieving widow? Would she step back from being at the center of her self-created empire?
It’s also a fair question in the context of “The School of Dolly” - our on-going analysis of the patterns and behaviors that propelled the child of illiterate Appalachians to become one of the most famous and successful entertainers, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists in the world.
When Queen Victoria’s husband died, she notoriously removed herself from public life for decades and forced everyone around her to put their lives on hold out of respect for her sadness. The Empress of the British Empire essentially quit the job, and historians tell us the people of her realms genuinely suffered.
Would Queen Dolly do the same? Would she scrap plans for “Dolly: An Original Musical” currently in development for the summer of 2025? Would she skip her traditional appearances on opening day at the Dollywood theme park when she personally thanks season passholders and does media interviews (typically, the times when I and other local reporters have gotten the chance to interview her)? Would she skip the festivities around the park’s 40th anniversary in 2025?
Perhaps I was the only one, but I thought - maybe, just maybe, she will. And if she did, who could blame her? Grief sucks. I don’t care who you are. Plus, it’s not like she needs the money.
The answer to my speculation came within a few days of her husband’s death. No, Dolly would not wither in private and wallow in her personal pain. In fact, she would do the opposite. She would respond to what probably was the biggest tragedy of her life so far by conducting a masterclass, showing all of us - icons like her or peons like me - what it looks like to endure personal pain while engaging with the world and carrying on with the work at hand.
On March 6th, three days after the announcement of her husband’s death, Parton released a new single called “If You Hadn’t Been There” - a heart-wrenching tribute to Dean in which she whisper-sings what feels like a sister song to “I will Always Love You.”
“If you hadn’t been there, where would I be?
Without your trust, love and belief…
The ups and downs we’ve always shared…
And I wouldn’t be here…
If you hadn’t been there,”
Of course she wrote a song, I thought. Dolly repeatedly has told us she makes life make sense by picking up a guitar and creating new music.
Eight days after that - eleven days after word came of Carl Dean’s death - Dollywood held it’s 2025 season grand-opening. Season passholders traditionally get in one day early for a sneak peek at the park and a chance to see Dolly herself, and the sequence of events of the day have become a tradition as well. Gates open. Huge crowds swarm in. Late morning, Dolly appears on stage inside the park’s Celebrity Theater. A standing-room only packed house roars; many openly weep (no joke). She hypes the park’s new season and often sings a song. Then she’s off to an afternoon of back-to-back one-on-one media interviews with national and even local press.
(Sidebar: It bears repeating just how uncommon this is. Icons rarely talk to reporters, to local reporters like me - NEVER. But Dolly has for years and still does. “She knows that the local reporters are her people,” one of her team members told me years ago.)
And then, around 4pm, Dolly hops on a horse-drawn carriage and waves to the crowds in the opening day parade through Dollywood just in time for the start of the local TV evening news.
Opening day 2025 arrived. On cue, the crowds showed up, many probably thinking like me… that there were plenty of valid reasons for Dolly not to be there this year.
And yet - there she was, shimmering in bright pink - not black - and smiling to the crowd of season passholders, almost as if nothing had happened.
But when she started to speak on stage in the Celebrity Theater, it became immediately clear that something had happened, and that she wasn’t close to getting over it yet.
“I want to take a moment to thank you all for all the flowers and the cards and the well wishes for the loss of Carl,” she said, looking at the audience, not the jumbo teleprompters on the theater’s back wall that had her scripted comments ready and waiting.
“You know how I loved him, and he would want me to be working today… And I expect to be working,” she said. When I heard her say that, I thought - that’s exactly what I’ve heard hard-working Appalachians say time and time again, people who got the worst news of their lives and then got up the next morning to milk the cow and plow a field. They had work to do, even if they had to do it with tears in their eyes.
“So anyway, I want you to know - I will always love him. And I want you to know - I will always love you.”
And then after a half-second pause - just long enough for her eyelashes to flutter up and down - Dolly got back to work.
“And can you believe it’s been 40 years?!” she roars with a mega-watt smile on her face, a reference to the 2025 anniversary of Dollywood’s first opening day. The crowd cheers. She grabs the mic off the stand. Her eyes find the teleprompter, and off she goes. Back to work and back to her life’s work of positioning her business and her brand to succeed, making sure that her gift to the people and the mountain communities she loves will keep on living and keep on giving long after she too is dead and gone.
Students in The School of Dolly - you may not be an icon, but you can learn a lesson from one who is. Hard times will come. At home and at work, in public and in private, moments of crisis will happen. And when they do, you will face a critical question: will this break me? Will this be the wave that takes me out?
For a few reasons, I’m confident Dolly will never follow the unfortunate path of other icons. As we’ve observed here in The School of Dolly, she shows every sign of being rooted in reality about herself, her work, and the world around her. She sees it all for what it is - a gift! An opportunity to realize her dream while helping others along the way.
By appearing on stage and waving and smiling in the parade, she proved once again that, no matter how iconic she may be, it ain’t about her. For Dolly, it’s about her fans and her employees and the business and philanthropic machine she’s created, all of them depending on her to show up and be amazing for as long as she possibly can.
Hard times come to us all, and there’s no “right way” to deal with the pain. But here in the School of Dolly, a strategy for dealing with life’s heartbreaks and holding on to hope becomes clear: rooted in life’s truth, you can face life’s terrors. Concerned with others above self, you can find the strength to get up and keep going.
You can suffer while smiling. You can be wounded while working.
You can be shattered and still find a way to shine.
What a profoundly beautiful analysis of Dolly’s strength and determination during such a sad time in her life. She - and you - are always inspiring.
This was a wonderful tribute to Dolly. I enjoyed reading about her determination and grit during a difficult time for her.
Josh, you have a gift for writing that makes everything seem so real. I look forward to reading more of your work. M. Ward