As I pulled into my driveway, nursing the wounds of a recent heartache, her high lonesome vocals came to a tender conclusion. Squinting through the sunshine piercing the clouds of that big Montana sky, a butterfly flew by.
“Everything’s gonna be alright,” Dolly sang. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Dolly. That one name tells you everything – who I’m writing about, what song I heard, why the butterfly mattered. Few in American life transcend fame so completely that mononymy comes naturally.
Dolly Parton was one of them. Known for the poetry of her lyrics, the artistry of her performance, and the generosity of her heart, the angel of Appalachia passed away on Aug. 25, 2026. She was 80.
It is difficult to put into words exactly what Dolly meant to me. From playing “Dagger Through the Heart” on repeat while crying alone in my bedroom as an angsty adolescent to screaming the lyrics to “9 to 5” after a tough day of work in my 20s to finding solace in “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” the day following her death, Dolly has been a balm and a constant my entire life. Indeed, one of my earliest memories is of Mamaw humming along while Dolly sang on TNN.
This in itself isn’t unusual. Dolly sold more than 100 million records, starred in several hit films, and became a titan of the theme park industry. She touched countless lives across the globe.
Yet for a gay boy growing up in Appalachia, she was something more.
“For a lot of Southern and Appalachian gay men, Dolly Parton’s was the first voice they ever heard say ‘I love you’ in their own accent – and mean them exactly as they are. No qualifiers. No conditions,” my fellow Appalachian writer Willie Carver said on Facebook. To be honest, I can’t say it better.
Dolly embraced the LGBT community at a time when doing so was not just controversial, but career-ending. She famously entered – and lost – a Dolly Parton lookalike contest held at a West Hollywood gay bar. She was an early AIDS activist and co-produced “Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt,” an Oscar-winning documentary about AIDS Memorial Quilt. She wrote an Oscar-nominated song for the landmark 2005 film “Transamerica.”
For a young kid in Kentucky in 2001, bullied for being gay and feeling as though his culture and region would never accept him, Dolly was the light of a clear blue morning. She was folksy, deeply religious, and – as Carver wrote – spoke with a twang not so different from my own. Hearing her affirm me in such a casual, breezy way – as though she couldn’t see what the big deal was – felt both liberating and deeply grounding. Perhaps there was a place for me in the mountains, after all.
I don’t have the numbers – I don’t know if anyone has ever studied this – but I have no doubt that Dolly did more for gay people in Appalachia than she gets credit for. Not only did she help a lonely gay boy feel less alone, but I suspect she also gave permission for a lot of church ladies to quietly accept and love their gay children. She helped normalize us in a region historically hostile to anything and anyone “deviant.” She never preached, never lectured, never condescended. She did it with a shrug – as though loving us was the obvious thing to do. That was revolutionary.
Yet there’s another side to Dolly’s story that is equally inspiring and has had every bit as much influence on my life as her quiet advocacy for LGBT folks. Dolly showed me how to be myself – in all my mountain glory – while climbing a social ladder that too often actively knocked down Appalachians like myself.
Dolly was a joke, but it was one she wasn’t just in on – it was one she created. Dolly understood that the broader culture didn’t take “hillbillies” like us seriously. With good humor, she challenged those stereotypes – playing up to them when it suited her but never allowing herself to be defined by them.
Take this 1977 interview with Barbara Walters, posted by the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum the day we lost her. Walters asks Dolly if she would be called a “hillbilly.”
“If you had of, it would have been something very natural, but I would’ve probably kicked your shins or something,” Dolly answered with a laugh, continuing:
“The people who grew up where I was, we’re the ones that you’d consider the ‘Lil Abner’ people, Daisy May and that sort of thing. They took that kind of thing from people like us. But we were a very proud people. People with a lot of class. It was country class, but it was a great deal of class. Most of my people were not that educated, but they are very, very intelligent. Good common sense. Horse sense, we called it.”
It is a masterclass in deftly undermining the nastiest stereotypes about us. Sure, we’re your hillbillies. We’re the accents you mock, the people you think are barefoot and married to our cousins, the culture you project the ugliest ideas of America onto like some sort of sin-eater.
We are also proud. We are also classy. We are also whip-smart. And yeah, we’re in on the joke – but don’t mistake that for us being a joke.
Dolly showed me that I didn’t have to run away from who I am, whether it was as a gay man or as a poor Appalachian hillbilly. As I made my way in the world, both personally and professionally, I often looked to her example as the one to emulate.
I can walk into any hollow in Appalachia and know that I belong, even if everyone else thinks a gay guy like me doesn’t. I learned that from Dolly.
I interview congressmen and governors in my native accent, quietly daring them to underestimate me because I sound like a hick. I learned that from Dolly.
I live my life as an act of service, giving back where I can, even as I refuse to deny my own ambition – believing a poor boy from the mountains deserves success as much as a silver-spoon scion of America’s elite. I learned that from Dolly.
Since that moment in my driveway, I’ve noticed a lot more butterflies around my house. Perhaps it’s a coincidence. I like to think it’s Dolly reminding me that even though she’s gone, the love she shared and the lessons she imparted remain.
So, thank you, Miss Dolly. From you I learned to live authentically and without apology – as a gay man, as a poor kid, as an Appalachian. And for that, I will always love you.
Skylar Baker-Jordan is the editor-in-chief of the Glasgow Courier in Glasgow, Montana. He is originally from Leslie County, Kentucky.
The post Commentary – ‘I learned that from Dolly:’ What She Taught Me About Being Unapologetically Gay and Appalachian appeared first on The Daily Yonder.
