Dolly Parton in The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
NBCU
Country music icon Dolly Parton said Thursday she asked lawmakers in Tennessee to draft their bill to erect a statue of her in the state capital, Nashville.
“Given everything going on in the world, I think it’s not appropriate to put me on a pedestal,” Parton said on Twitter.
Parton, 75, added that she is open to being honored with a statue in Music City “somewhere along the way or maybe after I leave if you still feel I deserve it.”
“In the meantime, I will continue to do good work to make this great state proud,” she said in a statement.
In Sevierville, Tennessee, which is Parton’s hometown, a life-size statue of the nine-time Grammy winner is on display.
Statues in recent years have been at the center of volatile and divisive political debates over which Americans should be honored in the public square, and whether statues of figures with racist or otherwise controversial past should be dismantled.
But the bill to perpetuate Parton in Nashville, proposed by Democratic Rep. John Mark Windle, received broad dual support from the strong Republican Tennessee General Assembly.
Windle said in a recent interview with the Chattanooga Times Free Press that he was “shocked” by the reaction his bill generated.
Tennesseans “like Dolly Parton, not just because she’s a great musician,” Windle said. “She is a caring, compassionate and just a decent person. She takes care of her community, she takes care of her condition. And she does it selflessly.”
Parton has a strong history of philanthropy in the state and beyond. Her program “Imagination Library”, started in 1995, sends free books to children every month.
After the wildfires in Tennessee in 2016 destroyed numerous homes, Parton promised to donate $ 1,000 a month to every family that was homeless for six months.
Last April, Parton donated $ 1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, including Moderna’s vaccination system.