Dolly Parton’s sister Stella Parton claimed she hasn’t received any messages of condolence following the country icon’s death at 80.
“I haven’t heard from anyone in Nashville since my sister passed away,” Stella, 77, said on the Thursday, September 10, broadcast of CBS Mornings. “I haven’t had one condolence from anyone, anybody that I know, entertainers that I know. Nobody, not one.”
Dolly died on August 25 after battling an undisclosed form of cancer. Stella, who noted on Thursday that the “Jolene” singer was “prepared” for her death, thinks she knows why she hasn’t received support.
“I’m assuming it might be because of my political activism on social media,” Stella, who has publicly opposed President Donald Trump, claimed. “I don’t know.”
While Stella has vocalized her political beliefs online, Dolly never publicly revealed her own party affiliations.
“She would never have offended anybody. She never would have [shared her opinions],” Stella told CBS host Gayle King. “She was smarter than me, you know, I tell everything. I like everybody knowing what I think about it, [but] not her.”
According to Stella, her sister opted against discussing politics in the public eye “because she’s a good businesswoman.”
While Stella stressed that she would “never talk about” whether Dolly shared her viewpoints in private, the 9 to 5 star had previously been candid about her desire to stay silent.
“I try to shine with it and let them see it through me. I try to find the God-light in everybody and everybody shines,” Dolly told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023. “I see that in everybody. I go right to that God-light, and I don’t care if you’re Black or white or green or alien gray.”
She continued at the time, “I go to that, because we’re all pieces of God and we all have that little God-light inside us. Some don’t get to let it shine. If I don’t see it first out, I’d go searching. That’s how I accept everybody because I know that we’re all pieces of God.”
Dolly further explained that her perspective stemmed from her upbringing.
“Well, a lot of that is my personality, but I did grow up in the church, but sometimes that church can even go against you because I also grew up in a church where they criticized and condemned and so many things were a sin,” she noted to the outlet. “But in my own self, knowing how different I was, knowing that I was criticized for just looking the way I did, they thought I was trash, they thought I was a whore, that I was going to hell in a handbasket just for being young and dressing the way I did and being the way that I was.”
Dolly added, “I knew how innocent I was in being myself and how pure that was in me, so I try to look for that innocence and that purity in everybody else. I don’t condemn or criticize. I just accept and love.”
