How Dolly Parton's Southern charm made her an American icon with Farahn Morgan, Victoria Dougherty, and Taylor Wyna Stewart
It’s been about three weeks since America lost its truest sweetheart, Dolly Parton, our Queen of Country Music, on Aug. 25, 2026. Her death prompted tributes across the news and all over social media. Even the president ordered flags at half-mast until Sept. 1 to honor the Smoky Mountain Songbird. We hear every day about how our country is divided beyond repair. We’re surrounded by outrageous news all the time. But something unique happened in the wake of Dolly’s death: people from across not only the United States but the world came together to mourn and remember a celebrity. Of course, Dolly was more than a celebrity; her fans felt like they really knew her. They were proud of her. They felt her love. She had extended the magic within her out to her family, and then to her hometown, and then to her home state, and then to her country and the world, like a rhinestone-encrusted force field. While she had fans everywhere, Dolly’s brilliance and love had a particularly outsized impact on her home community of East Tennessee and Appalachia more generally. Dolly and her 11 siblings grew up poor in a one-bedroom cabin in the small Appalachian community of Locust Ridge, where she learned to sing and play guitar, often attributing her musical talents to her mother. Her father was a sharecropper, and Dolly has said that he was the smartest man she ever knew, despite not knowing how to read. She attributed her Imagination Library, which has gifted more than 300 million books to children worldwide, to her father. Over the course of her career, Dolly donated tens of millions of dollars to local hospitals, schools, and disaster relief in the area. She also brought the Dollywood theme park to Pigeon Forge, drawing several million visitors to the area every year. Dolly was resilient, talented, loving, witty, successful, and a unifier. She was a real example of the American dream and of Southern hospitality. Does such a celebrity still exist? On the latest episode of Southern Hospitality for Beginners, three female writers—Farahn Morgan of Southwest Virginia, Victoria Dougherty of Central Virginia, and Taylor Wyna Stewart of Alabama discuss that exact question. They also explain their appreciation for Dolly through strikingly similar themes: love of nature, family, and politeness. They share how memories of the women in their lives remind them of Dolly, and how they think Dolly was able to achieve her iconic reputation through the groundbreaking notion of kindness.
