Philanthropist Dolly Parton is a hero of the vaccine trials fighting Covid
There are doctors and scientists galore to credit for the joyous progress in the covid-19 vaccine trials. Moderna, one of the leading US vaccines, announced on Monday it is 95% effective. But there’s one name on the donor list you might not expect. It is none other than Dolly Parton.
Funding research for a vaccine is a change from the singers usual 9 to 5, but this is far from Parton’s first act of philanthropy. Like a fairy godmother to the US, there is hardly a life in America that hasn’t unwittingly benefitted from the singer’s generosity.
Parton was born in 1946, in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River into poverty. She was the fourth of twelve children; her mother had eleven pregnancies in twenty years. As a child, Parton began performing on radio and television programmes before making her debut album Hello, I’m Dolly in 1967. Now, aged 74, she has composed over 3,000 songs, holds the joint record for the most songs in the Billboard #1 country music charts for a female artist (twenty-five) and is one of the select few to have been nominated for The Academy Awards, The Grammys, The Tonys and The Emmys.
Parton shot to fame on The Porter Wagoner Show when she was around twenty years old as his “girl singer”. Seven years later, her solo career began to take off and she left the show, reportedly writing and singing I Will Always Love You to Wagoner before she left. Wagoner was angry the singer had left his show and sued her for one million dollars for breach of contract. Parton later said on the matter; “it took me a while to pay it off, but he got the first million dollars I ever made.” But Dolly is no ordinary performer. She knows generosity of no bounds, in both her personal and public life. Despite years of bad blood between the two, she later bailed Wagoner out of personal debt and was by his side when he passed away.
As Dolly became more famous, her look became more iconic; large bleach blonde beehive, bedazzled outfits, huge smile, and, of course, extremely large breasts. Her reputation is so tied to her appearance that when the first sheep was cloned from a cell taken from an adult ewe’s mammary gland, it was named Dolly. The glamour of her look has made her an icon in the LGBTQ+ community, with many drag queens emulating her appearance. In fact, one of the best Dolly Parton anecdotes has to be that she once entered a Dolly Parton Drag Queen lookalike competition, and came second to one of the drag queens.
One of the most interesting things about Parton is the manner in which she handles her constant objectification. I challenge you to find a talk show appearance or award show where an overtly sexist joke (usually about her breasts) hasn’t been made. Impossible. Yet, Dolly seems to actively invite these comments, often self-deprecatingly making them first. In the WNYC Studios Dolly Parton’s America podcast the singer admits that making the jokes is an intentional method of removing the power of objectification from men. The comments, she explains, lack the power to offend or belittle if she has made a better joke first.
In 1966, Parton married Carl Thomas Dean. Dean lives his life well out of the limelight and is said to have only seen his wife perform live once, but the singer has often praised their marriage saying they spend a lot of time together out of the public eye. The couple redid their vows on their 50th wedding anniversary, with Parton saying “we’re really proud of our marriage. It’s the first for both of us. And the last.” As a young woman, Parton suffered from endometriosis and had a hysterectomy, so the couple were unable to have children of their own (though Parton is arguably a mother of kinds to the whole of Tennessee). The pair also raised many of Parton’s eight younger siblings and she is the godmother to singer Miley Cyrus.
It is not merely her looks, talent or kindness, however, that has made the singer a household name. Parton is a slot-machine of wisdom, every quote is thoughtful, insightful and measured. So much so that her quotes are often referred to as “Dollyisms”. Parton is also shrouded in a slight air of mystery: she has managed the almost impossible task in 2020 of remaining completely apolitical throughout her entire career. “I have too many fans on both sides of the fence,” she told the Dolly Parton’s America podcast, “Of course, I have my opinions on everything. But I learned years ago to keep your mouth shut about things.” In a polarised country, Dolly Parton is perhaps one of very few things the whole of America (and maybe the world?) can agree on. She is the fairy godmother of unity and the poster-girl for actions speaking louder than words.
In 1988, Dolly Parton founded the not-for-profit, The Dollywood Foundation. The foundation offers scholarships to local high school students and runs a theme park (Dollywood), which helps fund her Imagination Library. As of 2016, the foundation expanded into the My People Fund following the wildfires that ripped through Tennessee. The foundation has been credited with vastly improving the standard of living through job opportunities and tax revenue to a previously depressed region.
The Imagination Library is perhaps Parton’s most impressive achievement to date. Inspired by growing up with a father who could not read or write, Parton launched the initiative so that children all over the world (from birth to age five) could receive a high quality, age appropriate book in the post, free of charge, every month. The initiative runs world wide and has given away more than 147 million books. “When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer,” Parton wrote on Twitter. “The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”
Over lockdown, Parton launched Goodnight with Dolly, a bedtime story YouTube series, with Parton reading the books to help soothe and distract children at a stressful time.
The singer also has worked to raise money for various other causes, including the American Red Cross and HIV/AIDS-related charities. She allowed her music to be used in a PETA campaign to stop dogs being kept outside, worked on campaigns to protect the bald eagle and hosted a telethon reportedly raising $9 million for the 2016 Great Smoky Mountain wildfires in Tennessee. This isn’t a rich woman throwing money away to fit an expectation of celebrity, but a genuine affection for the humble land she grew up in, and a dedication to making one corner of the world a better place.
Another great Dolly Parton legacy is that her family was so poor that the doctor who delivered her was paid in cornmeal. In 2006, she pledged $500,000 toward a proposed hospital and cancer center in Sevierville in the name of Robert F. Thomas, the physician who delivered her.
By now, you have probably realised that I think Dolly Parton is an angel walking on earth, but the mystery of her coronavirus vaccine involvement remains. In 2014, Parton was involved in a car accident. She was treated for minor injuries at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (VUMC) by Professor Naji Abumrad. Abumrad, an Lebanese immigrant who also grew up in Tennessee, immediately liked the singer and the two struck a friendship. In the years since, she has been a generous donor to VUMC, particularly the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital in honor of her friend Professor Abumaud and her niece, who was successfully treated for leukemia at the hospital as a child.
It was also through this connection that the 2019 hit podcast Dolly Parton’s America came to be made (and how so many of the facts and anecdotes you have just read came to light); the producer and host, Jad Abumrad, is Professor Abumrad’s son.
It was Professor Abumrad who inspired Parton’s donation to the vaccine research, too. According to The Guardian, Parton wrote on Instagram, “My longtime friend Dr Naji Abumrad, who’s been involved in research at Vanderbilt for many years, informed me that they were making some exciting advancements towards that research of the coronavirus for a cure. I am making a donation of $1 million to Vanderbilt towards that research and to encourage people that can afford it to make donations.” It was reported this week that her donation had helped fund the Moderna vaccine.
I never thought I’d be thankful for a car crash, but it led Dolly to Professor Abumrad, and their friendship might just have helped save the world.