A Master Class in Self-Possession

Dear Saint Mary’s Friends,

For the past few days, I have watched with sadness, gratitude, and awe as the world has mourned the loss of Dolly Parton. Bouquets have been laid at her statue in Sevierville, Tennessee. The Empire State Building was lit up in pink at 9:25 p.m. on the day of her death. Tributes poured in from scores of musicians. Even the Band of the Coldstream Guards performed “9 to 5” during the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. As a New York Times columnist asked (and answered) in a 2019 headline: “Is There Anything We Can All Agree On? Yes: Dolly Parton.”

What I most admired about Dolly was simply the way she carried herself. She was invariably kind and polite, humble and mannered, a person of tremendous faith. She built her life, her personhood, from scratch, and every part of it—from her unabashed glamour to her dazzling songwriting and performing to her sharp business acumen to her boundless generosity—was deliberately imagined, joyfully constructed, and completely under her control. Is there a message for Saint Mary’s College in all of that? Could Dolly offer our students (and indeed all of us) a master class in self-possession?

The syllabus for that master class might focus on helping women to orchestrate their unique gifts—intelligence, creativity, courage, humor, faith, self-command—and invite them to harmonize those gifts in lives that are unmistakably their own. Dolly did not merely possess a remarkable list of qualities—like every great musician, she knew when each quality should be played forte and when it should be played pianissimo. As someone who learned at a young age to wear a patchwork coat of many colors, she integrated, across her eighty years, those essential elements of herself, until the qualities became a seamless whole—and the whole became greater than the individual parts.

We could all do well by taking to heart one particular element of her advice: "Find out who you are and do it on purpose." That seems to me an especially rich message for students at a women’s college. One of my favorite stories of Dolly being true to herself is of the time she declined to sign away half her rights to “I Will Always Love You” when Elvis Presley wanted to record it. She would have been thrilled to hear “The King” croon that tune, but the price was too high. As she said years later, when Whitney Houston’s version sat at the top of the Billboard charts for weeks on end, her earlier decision to retain her full rights made her “enough money to buy Graceland.”
 
While that story has sometimes been reduced to the slogan “Know Your Worth” (and it’s not a bad slogan!), Dolly’s life models much more. Understand who you are and what you stand for. Nurture your capacity to listen, to love, and to build relationships across differences. Be warm and kind and curious. Be gracious and grateful. Remember the source of all your blessings and find a meaningful way to be a blessing to others. 

College years are formative—a time of continued becoming. SMC’s own Adriana Trigiani ’81, who shares Appalachian roots with Dolly Parton (and once worked for her!) wrote a blog post in 2025 that includes “10 essential rules of life” she learned from Dolly. One of them that struck me very powerfully as we launch a new academic year involves the complexity of being both thankful for your past and true to your future. Adri mentions an old Appalachian catchphrase: “Don’t get above your raising.” She explains: “Mountain folk are humble. No matter your gifts, the expectation was that you must be grateful for them because you’re blessed. No grandstanding. No bragging allowed.”

“Sometimes,” she continues, “that little phrase also meant: Keep your ego in check. Don’t aim too high. Don’t dream too big. Dolly had a way of getting above her raising by taking us with her. She taught us to take charge of our stories by example.” Dolly never abandoned the place she came from. But she made it part of a much bigger story. She found a way to be both of it and above it.

As the world pauses to tip a bejeweled Stetson to the truly remarkable Dolly Parton, I hope that each of us finds a way to let our inner Dolly step out confidently onto the stage of our own lives. 

Warm regards,

Katie Conboy, Ph.D.
President

August 31, 2026