Country-music icon and philanthropist Dolly Parton has revealed that she turned down the Presidential Medal of Freedom not once, but twice.
If anyone deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom, it’s Dolly Parton. Besides being a Grammy Award-winning artist, the singer runs a literacy program called Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which has donated more than 100 million children’s books to those in need, since 1995.
After the Tennessee wildfires of 2016, Parton also launched the My People Fund, which pledged to donate $1000 per month to displaced families.
Yet, when she was offered the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice during the Trump Administration, Dolly Parton declined. “I couldn’t accept it because my husband was ill and then they asked me again about it and I wouldn’t travel because of the COVID,” Dolly Parton told press.
These comments are an example of our two favourite qualities of Parton’s (no, not those); her humility and selflessness.
So true but then, with Morrison, the bar isn’t very high.
— Ricki Coughlan (@RickiCoughlan) February 2, 2021
On the same day as her The Today Show interview, Dolly told CNN that although she had donated $1 million to coronavirus vaccine development, she has not yet had the jab as she did not want to “jump the line.”
“I didn’t want to jump line,” says Dolly Parton, who donated $1 million to Covid-19 vaccine development. “I didn’t donate the money so I could be protected. I did it for everybody.” https://t.co/tcs6zn3BH8
— CNN (@CNN) February 2, 2021
On the possibility of receiving an award during Biden’s presidency, Parton said to The Today Show: “I don’t work for those awards. It’d be nice, but I’m not sure that I even deserve it. But that’s a nice compliment for people to think that I might deserve it.”
We don’t deserve you, Dolly.
