Editor’s Introduction
Recently we shared a deeply personal passionate piece about Dolly Parton by award winning journalist Holly Gleason. This piece provides the thoughts and feelings of Larissa Rector and James Akenson. Most importantly, Rector and Akenson share the deeply local and personal dimensions of the Dolly grieving process. The local and personal responses complement the formal state, national, and international responses to Dolly’s passing. You will particularly find Larissa Rector’s personal thoughts to show the depths of emotion attached to Dolly’s passing. RIP Dolly.
Grieving Dolly Everywhere
Larissa Rector
Cookeville, Tennessee, U.S.A
James E. Akenson
Cookeville, Tennessee, U.S.A
The passing of Dolly Parton surprised everyone by its suddenness. It’s not at all surprising that major news networks featured stories about her passing. CBS no doubt carefully prepared in anticipation of her eventual passing. CNN’s “The Situation Room” Wolf Blitzer included Dolly features at a time when the Iran War, trade wars, mid term elections, and sensational murder trials all held national attention.
It surprised us though at the depth of the grieving process at the ‘big picture’ national and international levels and the “small picture” local and personal level. DJs at The Country Giant in Cookeville, Tennessee said that the outpouring for dolly rivaled the 1977 passing of Elvis Aaron Presley.
Grief at the loss of a family member or close friend can be lengthy and complicated. It takes time. A close friend and colleague of James recently lost his wife to a long battle with cancer. He is devastated. At the cultural level, the passing of an iconic person…be it President, a Senator such as Lyndsey Graham’s recent passing, or the death of a monarch such as Queen Elizabeth creates a grief based on history, symbols, and rituals a country and culture have in common. It involves formal and informal rituals that allows everyone to participate that memorialize the loved one.
Dolly’s passing brought about formal and informal state, national, and international actions. President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. flag flown at half-staff from 6:0pm Tuesday 25 August to sunset on Tuesday 1 September. President Trump also issued and official proclamation. Not surprisingly, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a proclamation ordering flags to be flown at half-staff. The Nashville airport is being renamed in Dolly’s honor.
Geoff Walden in Queensland, Australia reported that the local news featured Dolly’s passing with longer stories than he had ever seen before. Geoff Walden, an accomplished musician with a PhD in ethnomusicology, played at a senior citizen facility and honored Dolly. Walden stated “We went to do our usual first Thursday of the month session at the local aged care facility. We included some Dolly pieces in the set list. All with lyrics on the screen. So we had a good talk about Dolly and her ways of making the world a better place.”
The University of Tennessee Football team will wear special Butterfly decals on their helmets, The Tennessee Titans professional football team held a moment of silence at a preseason game with the Chicago Bears. On yet a different level, Facebook individuals and groups posted about Dolly’s passing. The Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University featured their Dolly collection.
Yes. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and the Birthplace of Country Music Museum honored Dolly. Award winner journalists such as Holly Gleason posted heartfelt tributes to Dolly on major sites.
The grand scale of remembrance and grieving shows the “big picture’ level. Let’s get more personal and share our experiences in grieving for Dolly at the local personal level. Schools in the Cookeville, Tennessee area found ways to honor Dolly. Upperman Middle School shared love for Dolly. Their Facebook post stated.
Our faculty and students went all-out dressing up in honor of the iconic Dolly Parton—because if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it with extra sparkle and a lot of heart. While the big hair and western boots were a blast, today was about celebrating what Dolly truly stands for: kindness, community, and a lifelong commitment to literacy and opportunities for all children. As Dolly famously said, “If you see someone without a smile, give ’em yours.”#DollyPartonDay, #LiteracyMatters, #SpreadKindness, #ImaginationLibrary, #SchoolSpirit, #DreamBig
The comments and the hashtags show that Dolly’s life and purpose touches down to the local and individual level. Likewise, local elementary schools, other middle schools, and high schools did similar activities to honor Dolly. Tellico Plains High School in East Tennessee placed a butterfly on the fifty yard line of their football field. Faculty and staff wore pink for Dolly.
James Akenson learned of Dolly’s passing through Rolling Stone and other emails. He first action was very personal as he told his Life Partner (a.k.a. wife) Mickie that Dolly had died. Next, he created a post for the International Country Music Facebook page. A simple message stated “Everyone is saddened to learn of Dolly Parton’s passing. She added so much to our lives. Indeed, they are precious memories that linger.
Thank you, Dolly. You are loved, missed, and never forgotten.” The accompanying graphic showed the cover of the book Dolly Parton Star of the Show. Yes, he used a reference to the hymn Precious Memories that was part of Dolly’s past.
The next step in the grieving process saw him post on his Facebook page. He made the message simple. “I’m teary eyed.” He included a photograph of a 2025 Christmas presented from Life Partner Mickie. Dolly Parton: Star of the Show. It wasn’t complex. But, the message had lots of emotional aspects. Christmas ritual gift giving includes reading the Christmas story from the Book of Luke in a King James Bible.
Yes. James grew up in a ‘hard shell’ Baptist family as did Life Partner Mickie. Country Music has been an important part of his professional and personal life for over fifty years. He used Dolly’s music in his fifty two plus years teaching future teachers and practicing teachers in his teaching methods courses at Tennessee Tech University.
His simple posting of Dolly’s passing received a remarkable response. He never had so many responses and comments on any of his previous Facebook posts. Four hundred thirty-one people responded with sad faces, caring faces, or likes. Eighty-eight people posted comments. Here are some comments from friends, former students, and colleagues. Country Music artist Roseanna Rogers… So am I. So sad. Paul Buchanan…Coat of Many Colors is playing in my head.
I remember her on the Porter Wagoner Show when I was a kid. Tamara Sewell… This Hurts. Sara Hudgens…”Light and love and music for the world. Cynthia Prince… This one hits harder than others. Stephanie Vander Wel… Me too. I found out in the middle of my graduate seminar and had to take several moments to compose myself.” And the beat goes on.
Let’s share one longer comment from a former student Scott Kirkham who teaches near Knoxville, Tennessee.
It doesn’t seem possible to imagine East Tennessee without Dolly Parton. What we will have is the memory of her kindness and love. She is memorialized throughout our community through her family, music, vision (Destination Imagination, Dolly Parton Children’s Hospital, DollyWood), and the countless lives she has made better. Our High School announced her passing and played 9 to 5 at dismissal in her memory.
Like all the state, national, and international tributes the personal depth of feeling for Dolly deeply resonates down to the most personal level for so many people.
There’s yet another set of comments about the grieving process. Larissa Rector, a teacher and administrator with a PhD from Tennessee Tech, shares at an even deeper level.
There’s a particular kind of ache that comes with losing something from your childhood. It’s not always a person who sat at your dinner table or held your hand through a hard season. Sometimes it’s someone who lived in the background of your life so completely that they became part of the wallpaper of who you are. When they’re gone, it feels like a small, bright piece of you has been quietly lifted out. You’re still yourself… just one of those pieces less.
Dolly Parton was that for me.
She wasn’t a relative. Or a close friend. But she was woven into the fabric of my family in ways that made her feel like she was. Growing up, Dollywood wasn’t just a theme park—it was a pilgrimage. We’d pile into the car and head to Pigeon Forge, the mountains rising up around us like they were part of the show.
I can still feel the sticky summer heat mixed with wet clothes from the log rides, the smell of cinnamon bread and Oreo funnel cake, the sound of the train coming straight toward you on the Blazing Fury, and the way the whole place seemed to sparkle a little more just because it carried her name.
Years later I took my own kids there, watching their eyes light up the same way mine once did. It felt like passing something sacred down the line—another generation learning that this place, this woman, was part of our story too.
Even the ground itself in Sevierville holds a piece of Dolly for us. My dad built the stone waterfall features that you’ll pass by while floating down the lazy river at Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort & Spa. Every time I drive past the resort, or see a photo of these structures, I think about his hands on the rock, shaping something that would stand under her name. It made her feel close in a quiet, tangible way—like our family had left a fingerprint on her world the same way she left fingerprints all over ours.
Music was the strongest thread that ran through our family, stitching us tightly to one another. I can still hear us belting out Coat of Many Colors in the car—my mom, my sister, and me, windows down, no shame, no volume control.
We knew every word. We felt every word. That song about a little girl wearing a coat stitched together from scraps of love wasn’t just a melody to us. It was a reminder that pride and tenderness could live in the same place. Dolly’s voice made the most ordinary things feel holy.
Then there were the stories that made her feel almost like kin. My great-uncle Clay would talk about growing up with Dolly. He’d sit behind her in class and pull her hair—his clumsy, boyish way of flirting. He was never mean about it, and she was never mean back.
Just two East Tennessee kids in the same classroom, one of them already shining a little brighter than the rest—setting the tone for what she would become just a few years down the road. The way he told it, you could almost see her turning around with that half-smile, already bigger than the room she was in.
And then there were my mom’s memories of Dolly that she would share with my sister and me. In fact, her very first memory of music and song was one that involved Dolly and my Mammaw Pearl. My mom would sit and sing along with old vinyl albums at the top of her lungs, somehow knowing every single word even as a small child. From another room Mammaw would call out, “Is that another Dolly I hear singing in there?”
And my mom would just giggle, swear it was only her, and launch into the next verse with even more gusto. That image has always stayed with me—my little mother, barely big enough to hold the record sleeve, already claiming Dolly’s songs as her own, while Mammaw smiled from the other room like she’d expected nothing less.
See, Dolly was all around me. In my TN childhood home. In my mom’s small bedroom. In Uncle Clay’s schoolroom. She was in the car on long drives and in the mountains on summer trips. Especially for we Tennesseans, she was everywhere. She was part of us. Always a part of us. Her music, her humor, her refusal to shrink herself—it all sank into the soil we grew up on.
She made it feel okay to be loud and soft at the same time. To be proud of where you came from and still dream bigger than the hollow (or ‘holler’) you grew up in. And to remember that “a flower that grows wild will always survive.”
Though a small piece of me has been lifted from my existence, remnants of what once was still remain. The same person who learned the words to those songs before I could fully understand them is the mom who reads her children bedtime stories from Dolly’s Imagination Library. The same person who felt a quiet pride every time I saw her face on a billboard or heard that unmistakable voice crackling through a car radio is the same woman walking the paths Dolly has cleared.
Thank you, Dolly.
Thank you for everything you did while you were here.
And also.
Thank you.
For bringing back the butterflies.
I see you.
I miss you.
We all do.
