Dolly Parton Had to Train Her Dad to Tell Her He Loved Her
Dolly Parton loved her family, but she was frustrated with the way they — and her dad in particular — showed their affection. While Parton knew her father loved her because of his actions, he practically never outright said this to her. Parton eventually grew so frustrated with this that she taught him to say “I love you.”
Dolly Parton had to teach her dad to say ‘I love you’
For years, Parton noted her family’s struggle to verbally tell people they loved them.
“Always at holidays or other family gatherings, people would hug and say good-bye, but they would never say ‘I love you,’” she wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “Sure, I know that the love is there, but dammit, I want to hear it! I was the first one in my family, that I know of, to ever tell other family members that I loved them.”
She finally reached a breaking point when she said goodbye to her father after a visit home.
“One day, after I had been living away from home for many years, I was saying good-bye to Daddy when I told him, ‘I love you,’” she wrote. “He responded in the usual nonverbal, look-at-the-ground Parton way, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore.”
She made her father look her in the eyes and asked him to say he loved her. When he responded that he loved all his children, her frustration only grew.
“‘Not you’uns!’ I kept on. ‘This has got nothing to do with Cassie or Bobby or anybody else. I want to know if you’ — I emphasized the word by poking my finger into his chest — ‘love me,’ I said with an emphatic point toward myself,” she wrote. “He tried to look to one side, but I held his face firmly. He blushed and sputtered and finally said haltingly, ‘I love you.’”
After this, it became much easier to get the rest of her family members to say “I love you.”
Her husband treated the phrase similarly
Parton went through a similar experience with her husband. When he proposed, he hadn’t told her he loved her yet. His proposal was also not all that romantic.
“Finally, one day he said, quite matter-of-factly, ‘You’re either gonna have to move to the other side of town or we’re gonna have to get married.’ That, to Carl, was a proposal,” she wrote. “People always want to know how he asked me to marry him, and I always have to say, ‘He didn’t exactly ask.’ Part of me was thrilled that he wanted to marry me, but another part was a little taken aback. That must have been the strongest part because that was the one that answered.”
A surprised Parton responded that he hadn’t told her he loved her yet.
“Hell, you know I love you,” he told her.
Dolly Parton showed her dad she loved him with her charity
Years after this, Parton showed her father how much he loved her when she launched her Imagination Library. The program sends free books to children.
“Before he passed away, my Daddy told me the Imagination Library was probably the most important thing I had ever done,” she wrote on the program’s official website. “I can’t tell you how much that meant to me because I created the Imagination Library as a tribute to my Daddy. He was the smartest man I have ever known but I know in my heart his inability to read probably kept him from fulfilling all of his dreams.”
