Mayor argues against lowering flag for Dolly Parton

In my flying experience, many airports are named for famous people. Eight American airports are named for former presidents; many are named for noted civic or military figures; and several are named for cultural icons such as John Wayne and Will Rogers.

Now we can add Nashville to the list. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has announced plans to name Nashville International Airport after Dolly Parton, following the country star’s death from cancer. He said he had spoken to Parton’s team, who “expressed their appreciation for the extraordinary outpouring of support to honor Dolly.”

She would be the first woman to have a major airport named after her and the second musician, following Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans. The practice is more common overseas: Liverpool’s airport is named after John Lennon, while Salzburg’s airport is branded after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Airports in Poland, Ukraine, Brazil, and Argentina also have airports named for famed musicians.

Flags are still flying at half-mast today in honor of her life and passing. But not everyone is on board: the mayor of a small city in Mississippi worries that it will “lessen the meaning of the gesture” in the future.

Olive Branch Mayor Ken Adams acknowledged Parton as a “great person” who “brought happiness to millions of people and has done tremendous things for others throughout her life.” However, he believes lowering the American flag “should be reserved for our military heroes, fallen first responders, presidents and other major national leaders, or events that have had a tremendous impact on our country.”

Was Dolly Parton a “major national leader”? Did she have a “tremendous impact on our country”? Let’s consider some facts, then apply them to our lives and legacy.

“Dolly Parton’s greatest legacy”

New York Times columnist David French was one of millions whose children received a free book from Dolly every month for five years. According to her Imagination Library, one in six children in America receives a book every month from her. But as French notes, “that’s only the beginning of the ways in which Dolly touched our lives.”

He reports that she helped build hospitals and gave immense sums of money to fund disaster relief. When wildfires tore through the Great Smoky Mountain region in 2016, she gave $1,000 a month to every family in Sevier County that lost a home, then gave each family a $5,000 final gift. As the Covid epidemic was killing tens of thousands of Americans each month, she gave $1 million to Vanderbilt to help fund the research that led to the Moderna vaccine.

But there’s more: Southern Living notes that she created the Dollywood Foundation in 1988 to help children in her home county succeed in education. She personally promised every seventh- and eighth-grader that she would pay them $500 when they graduated from high school; the dropout rate fell from 35 percent to 6 percent. The foundation also gives a $15,000 scholarship to high school students in the county to attend any accredited university.

When Hurricane Helene struck, she donated over $2 million to a local nonprofit that helped more than 500 families get back on their feet after losing their homes to the storm. At the end of her life, according to her sister, Dolly offered to let doctors test experimental drugs on her, hoping that what they learned could someday save someone else.

As the Southern Living headline notes, “Dolly Parton’s greatest legacy may be the millions of lives she’s touched.” Therein lies a lesson for us all.

“Don’t rejoice in successful service”

The Tennessee governor noted, “Dolly Parton’s extraordinary life is forever woven into the fabric of our state.” With regard to Dolly, “forever” is only a slight exaggeration. But it is an exaggeration, nonetheless.

Nothing that is material will endure in the eternal. It’s been noted that when the game is over, the pieces all go back into the box. I once heard a pastor comment that he had never seen a U-Haul attached to a hearse. As the proverb goes, “There are no pockets in a shroud.”

I passed a church sign the other day that said, “Your faith is the only thing you can take to heaven and leave behind on earth.” I understand the sentiment, but would expand the thought to include those we help make our faith their own. As a mentor once asked me, “When you get to heaven, if Jesus asks, ‘Who did you bring me?’ what will your answer be?”

However, this is not an exhortation for us simply to try harder to do better in influencing people for Jesus. The August 30 reading in My Utmost For His Highest begins, “Jesus Christ says, in effect, Don’t rejoice in successful service, but rejoice that you are rightly related to me.” Oswald Chambers explained:

You never can measure what God will do through you if you are rightly related to Jesus Christ. Keep your relationship right with him, then whatever circumstances you are in, and whoever you meet day by day, he is pouring rivers of living water through you, and it is of his mercy that he does not let you know it.

This does not mean that we are not to share our faith verbally and consistently. Paul asked, “How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Romans 10:14). But it does mean that we should measure success by obedience.

“The great use of life”

When we live for Jesus with our words and works, staying submitted to his Spirit and continuing his earthly ministry through our lives, we plant trees we’ll never sit under and bear “much fruit” for his glory (John 15:5). And what is being said of Dolly Parton will be said of us: our “greatest legacy” will be the lives we touched with the hands of Jesus.

The philosopher and psychologist William James observed,

“The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”

How will you use your life today?