Few will be unaware that country music superstar and Sevier County, Tennessee native Dolly Parton has passed away at the age of 80.

Parton’s achievements in the music world are legendary. Over her 60-plus-year career, she became one of the best-selling music artists of all time, selling over 100 million records and earning 11 Grammys as well as numerous other musical honors. In interviews, she said she identified “first and foremost” as a songwriter, writing more than 3,000 songs, including “Coat of Many Colors,” “Jolene,” and “I Will Always Love You” (a song made even more famous by Whitney Houston’s cover in the 1992 movie The Bodyguard).

Parton had no children of her own but seems to have relished the fairy godmother role—the Imagination Library charity she established has sent over 300 million books to children around the world over the past 30 years. In her own Sevier County, the Dollywood Foundation has given scholarships to high school students, incentivized seventh- and eighth-graders to complete high school, and distributed relief to families that had homes destroyed in wildfires. As The Guardian comments, “It is telling that the tributes shared after Parton’s death … have been equally about her philanthropy and her music. There was so much of both.”

The entertainment industry is notorious for extracting its pound of flesh (or worse) from the stars it has helped to reach the pinnacle of success. Thus, it is disappointing but not surprising that while Parton credited songwriting with keeping her “sane in an insane world,” she, like many other celebrities, appears to have felt compelled to participate in the Covid insanity. In addition to establishing the “Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund” at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt Health (an institution that continuously benefited from her largesse), she repurposed “Jolene” to promote the Covid shots in a staged news spot at Vanderbilt. Telling her fans that she was “smart enough to get [the shots]” and announcing that she would receive the Moderna injection on camera, she added, “To all of you cowards out there, don’t be such a chicken squat—get out there and get your shot.”

We nevertheless give Parton credit, not just for her talent, business acumen, and fierce commitment to her country roots, but also for a generosity of heart and spirit that, by all accounts, was sincere and lifelong.

I’ve chased after rainbows, I’ve captured one or two
I’ve reached for the stars, I’ve even held a few
I’ve walked that lonesome valley, topped the mountains, saw the sky
I’ve laughed and I have cried, but I have always tried
~ “Try” by Dolly Parton