Dolly Parton is known worldwide for her big hair, big boobs and an even bigger heart. Parton has worked tirelessly to improve literacy and promote education in her home state of Tennessee with her Imagination Library donating more than 100 million children’s books to date.
Her Dollywood Foundation also donated thousands of dollars to several hundred families in East Tennessee who lost their homes to wildfires.
But it’s not only Tennessee reaping the benefits of Dolly’s kind-hearted philanthropy. Over the decades she has supported several charities like United Way.
Dolly Parton turned down Donald Trump when he offered her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Twice!
She also donated multiple items to aid organization auctions, dedicated time and money for animal rights and to children’s hospitals and has been a big participant in the Make-a-Wish program. A lot of the wishes have included meeting Dolly while spending time at the Dollywood theme park.
Most recently Dolly has become known as a pandemic savior, donating $1 million to coronavirus research at Vanderbilt University. This helped fund Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine.
It’s a no brainer that this magnificent human deserves the Medal of Freedom. So why did she turn the nation’s highest civilian honor down…twice?
In an interview with TODAY, Dolly disclosed why she had to refuse the Trump Administration’s offer. “I couldn’t accept it because my husband was ill,” she explained after being offered the medal the first time. “Then they asked me again about it and I wouldn’t travel because of Covid.”
Now the 75-year-old songstress isn’t sure she can accept the medal from the Biden administration. She did reveal that they have reached out to her, but the country star is mindful that accepting from the new administration would create a political statement she doesn’t mean to make.
“I don’t work for those awards,” she reminded Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush at TODAY.
Last November she was quoted as saying “I’m just happy that anything I do can help somebody else, and when I donated the money to the Covid fund, I just wanted it to do good. Evidently, it is.”
She finished her chat with TODAY on Monday morning by speaking of receiving the award someday, “It’d be nice but I’m not sure that I even deserve it. But it’s a nice compliment for people to think that I might deserve it.”
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