Dolly Parton on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
NBCU
Country music icon Dolly Parton said Thursday she asked Tennessee lawmakers to take their bill to erect a statue of her on the state’s Capitol grounds in Nashville.
“Given all the happenings in the world, I do not think it appropriate to stand on a pedestal right now,” Parton said on Twitter.
Parton, 75, added that she is open to being honored with a statue in Music City, “somewhere in the future, or maybe after I’m gone if you still feel I deserve it.”
“In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to do a good job to make this great state proud,” she said.
A life-size statue of the nine-time Grammy winner is already on display in Sevierville, Tennessee, Parton’s hometown.
Statues have been at the center of volatile and divisive political debates in recent years about which Americans should be honored in public spaces and whether statues of figures with a racist or otherwise controversial past should be demolished.
However, the Parton Immortality Bill in Nashville proposed by Democratic MP John Mark Windle received widespread support from both parties from the heavily Republican General Assembly of Tennessee.
Windle said in a recent interview with the Chattanooga Times Free Press that he was “shocked” by the reaction his bill generated.
Tennesseans “love Dolly Parton, not just because she’s a great musician,” said Windle. “She’s a caring, compassionate, and just decent person. She cares about her community, she cares about her condition. And she does it selflessly.”
Parton has a strong history of philanthropy in the state and beyond. Their Imagination Library program, launched in 1995, sends free books to children every month.
After the 2016 forest fires in Tennessee destroyed numerous homes, Parton pledged to donate $ 1,000 a month to any family who had been absent for six months.
Last April, Parton donated $ 1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center to support its efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic, including Moderna’s vaccine study.
