OPINION:
“Tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen/Pour myself a cup of ambition/And yawn and stretch and try to come to life/Jump in the shower and the blood starts pumpin’/Out on the street, the traffic starts jumpin’/With folks like me on the job from 9 to 5.”
I remember, as a fourth-grader at Riverside Elementary School in rural upstate New York, using my milk carton as a microphone, performing Dolly Parton’s iconic hit for my classmates during lunch.
It would eventually become a sing-along with my girlfriends, where we would dance and entertain the cafeteria as the boys rolled their eyes and the lunch ladies clapped.
At 10 years old, I had ambition — and yes, it was to become a singer-songwriter like Dolly, who never used her gender or her poor, rural upbringing as an excuse not to pursue her dreams.
“You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try,” Dolly said of her decision to leave the Appalachian Mountains, having performed only at small weddings, funerals and in church, to seek fame and fortune in Nashville.
She would later repeat that mantra, starring in her first movie role in the 1980 film “9 to 5.” Actress Jane Fonda wanted Dolly for the role, where she was to play Doralee, a secretary who was sexually objectified because of her looks. Yet underneath the exterior was an underestimated, intelligent, competent woman who refused to let others define her.
Dolly accepted the part, but only on one condition: She would get to write the theme song. Knowing she was outmatched, starring alongside two established movie stars, Ms. Fonda and Ms. Tomlin, Dolly arrived on set having memorized the entire script.
During her downtime on set, she would observe all the hardworking men and women behind the scenes and start riffing — with her long acrylic fingernails — on the rhythmic foundation for the song “9 to 5.”
The song and the movie became tremendous commercial successes. The song shot to No. 1 on the country, pop and adult contemporary charts, earning Dolly an Oscar nomination. The movie became a blockbuster, with film critic Roger Ebert calling Dolly a “natural-born movie star,” while she received Golden Globe nominations for her performance.
At the time, I was too young to watch the movie, but the song became, for me and so many others, an anthem.
“I’ve always known how to stand my ground based on who I am and where I’m from and how my daddy told me to handle it,” Dolly said of going on-set for the first time. “Like our characters, we were at that time very smart gals, proud that we were accomplishing all these things, being strong women.”
For Dolly, being a strong woman meant never forgetting where she came from or what values propelled her to stardom. Faith played a major role in her life, as did her nearly 59-year-long marriage to her first love, Carl Thomas Dean.
“I grew up in a family that believed in God. My mother was very spiritual. My grandpa was a preacher,” Dolly said during a red-carpet interview, after achieving fame. “And it really did happen when my momma made my little coat, she told me the story of Joseph — I’m sure to make me proud of the fact that I was going to be wearing rags. … I just am who I am, and if someone sees something good in me, I want God to have the credit.”
At the height of her fame in the early 1980s, Dolly did a concert in Charleston, West Virginia. Charleston Civic Center general manager Chuck Kinder recalled that Dolly asked him to gather the staff who would be working her show, and she performed a mini-concert for them.
She greeted each one personally and asked to be escorted to the cheapest seat in the auditorium to test the song quality in the rafters.
“She cared for her people,” Mr. Kinder recalled.
That she did. Because her father never learned to read, Dolly established the Imagination Library, through which free books continue to be sent to families across the nation, regardless of income.
To improve high school graduation rates in her hometown, she offered $500 to seventh- and eighth-grade students if they graduated, along with a buddy.
The high school dropout rate in Sevier County, Tennessee, plummeted from more than 30% to just 6%.
On May 3, 1986, Dolly officially opened her theme park, Dollywood, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to provide jobs for her Appalachian town.
“When I first had the big idea to start Dollywood, my accountants and lawyers all thought I was making a big mistake. But I felt a calling to do this,” Dolly explained to Forbes last year. “So I got rid of all of them and brought in people who had faith in me. I told them, ’You need to listen to what my dreams are. I don’t need to dream your dreams; you need to help me carry out mine.’”
I never became the singer-songwriter I dreamed of when I was 10, but I did find a passion for politics, worked hard, left my hometown in New York for Washington, and rose to a job in the White House.
As Dolly said of herself: “I imagined it, I dreamed it, I worked for it, and God was good enough to let me have it.”
Rest in peace, Dolly Parton. Your inspiration to small-town girls like me will carry on for generations.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
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