Dolly Parton Once Dumped a Boyfriend After He Made an Insensitive Comment Following John F. Kennedy’s Assassination
Dolly Parton typically doesn’t talk politics. But in her 1994 memoir, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, the “Jolene” singer writes about the moment she learned John F. Kenney, whom she loved, was assassinated. The news that broke Parton’s heart also revealed her then-boyfriend’s true colors.
How Dolly Parton felt when she learned about John F. Kennedy’s assassination
During Parton’s senior year of high school, she performed on The Cas Walked Show during breaks in Knoxville. Parton’s then-boyfriend drove her to one of these shows in 1963.
“He was a good-looking boy who had always been nice to me,” she wrote in her memoir. “He had a pretty good car with a radio that worked, so I was looking forward to the trip with him.”
As they were riding along listening to the radio, the program cut out due to a special news bulletin.
“What I heard sent my heart crashing through the floorboards,” wrote Parton.
The radio broadcaster’s voice shook with emotion as he announced that President John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas.
“I had loved John Kennedy,” wrote Parton. “Not in the way a woman loves a man but in the way one idealist recognizes another and loves him for that place within themselves that they share. I didn’t know a lot about politics, but I knew that a lot of things were wrong and unjust and that Kennedy wanted to change them. He was young. He looked at the country with fresh eyes that saw what his predecessors could not or would not. I grieved for the country. For the loss of a spirit that young people and poor people and down-trodden people could share and call their own. I was choked silent. I was numb.”
Parton’s boyfriend’s reaction
It turned out to be a good thing that Parton felt numb upon hearing the news—”otherwise, I don’t think my heart could have stood what happened next.”
Upon hearing the radio’s announcement, Parton’s then-boyfriend had a very different reaction. He said that he was “glad they shot” the president. Parton was shocked and disgusted.
“I couldn’t believe what I had heard,” she wrote. “I couldn’t believe that a young person with whom I had shared intimacy and laughter could be so ignorant, biased, and insensitive. How could he dismiss a man, any human being, with so callous and hateful a remark? I suppose in your heart you always know such people exist, but you don’t want to believe those close to you could be that way.”
The Queen of Country never spoke to that boy again
As soon as the remark left her then-boyfriend’s lips, The “Dumb Blonde” singer knew it was over.
“It was obvious to me that a person who thought that way could never understand or truly appreciate me or anything I believed in,” she wrote.
The show they drove to ended up being canceled that night. Instead of spending the weekend in Knoxville, Parton had the boy drive her home.
“I never saw him again and never gave him an explanation,” she wrote. “I didn’t feel he deserved one. More than that, I knew he didn’t have the sensitivity to understand anyway.”
