Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem died a week apart in the rough year of 2026, Dolly on August 25, Gloria on September 2.

Two American geniuses, often mocked, often misunderstood, indefagitable, and so much smarter than their detractors. They were reduced to their bodies, Dolly ridiculed for her wigs and boobs, Gloria acknowledged for her beauty while simultaneously being reviled for her feminist politics. Their talents, the basis of their fame, were huge: Dolly for music and story-telling, Gloria for speaking and writing, both for organizing and building institutions. Without being haughty about it, with a delight in self-mockery, they had more talent than most of us. In theory, American democracy gives everyone life, liberty, and the right to pursue happiness, but some democratic citizens are more exceptional than others.

I knew Parton through her music and movies; I had the pleasure of working with Gloria, first as a writer for the early Ms. Magazine. My mourning has a personal ache and edge. However, for both women, I am a part of a vast community of grief and gratitude. No presidential executive order created this community.  They did— because of who they were and what they did. 

They were born in very American places, Dolly in 1946 in a sub-range of the Appalachian Mountains, the East Smokies. Gloria in 1934 in a region of the American industrial heartland, Ohio. Neither was born to wealth and privilege, far from it. They went elsewhere as young women, Dolly to Nashville, Gloria to college, then to India, then to New York. There they invented their careers and themselves.  

Moving away from the home of one’s birth is necessary for growth; remembering the home of one’s birth is necessary for the psychic integration of past and present. Neither forgot where they came from, far from it. Dollywood was not built in Palm Beach. The e-mail address I used for Gloria was easttoledo@aol.com. 

They had, not only their talents, but superb intelligence and perceptiveness.  They used them in the process of their self-invention, but I never saw Gloria browbeat anyone with her brains. They loved the power of books, because they were our vehicles of intelligence and perception and imagination. They were themselves imaginative, highly capable of seeing things anew, but they were also very funny, ironic, quick-witted. Their humor be truth-telling, and, as a result, be deflationary of the pompous and self-dealing and bullying.  Patriarchy had its formidable opponents and not only from 9 to 5. 

Theirs was the very opposite of the genius of cruelty, so on display in the architecture and acronym of ICE. They acted on the principles of generosity, empathy, compassion, and the need to construct a decent community. Neither had biological children, but families and nurturing can take many forms. Jesus, as far as I know, had no biological children. Nor did St. Theresa.

 I believe Dolly and Gloria differed about religion, but all great faiths remind us of the need for love and courage. “Being brave,” Gloria once wrote, “is not being unafraid, but feeling the fear and doing it anyway.” The world needs now to measure, with respect, their stature and nature as revolutionaries, to express gratitude that they travelled among us, year after year until their deaths, and to imitate their virtues. These, after all, are the virtues of the really strong.