Dolly Parton Reveals Her Dad Used To Secretly Clean Her Statue In Her Home Town

In my experience, dads have a lot of unique ways of showing their pride and support for their kids. It's not always as overt or loud as you might think, but the subtle gestures end up meaning the entire world!

It looks like this is true even for the dads of celebrities!

Dolly Parton is an icon, and deserves to be commemorated!

While there currently exist statues of Dolly Parton in various locations (and even a proposed one in front of the Tennessee capitol building), one that probably means a lot to the singer is the one in her home town!

It clearly also meant a lot to her dad, Robert Lee Parton.

"I always feel like I got my work ethic from my dad," Dolly says in the new Apple Fitness+ Time To Walk experience.

"Daddy used to go down to the courthouse where they had erected a statue of me. I remember myself being so proud of that statue," Dolly says. "I thought, 'A statue of me in the courthouse yard? That's usually reserved for presidents and people that have done really great things like that.'"

"So I went home and I said, 'Daddy did you know, they're putting a statue of me [...] down at the courthouse?'"

"Daddy said, 'Well yeah, I heard about that.' And he said, 'Now to your fans out there you might be some sort of an idol. But to them pigeons, you ain't nothing but another outhouse.'"

That sounds like exactly the kind of thing my dad would say to me! Dads always seem to know how to stop you from getting a big head.

However, Dolly reveals her dad used to secretly take "a bucket of soapy water in the back of his pick-up truck" to go clean the statue at night.

"That touched me so much," she says. "I loved my daddy and wanted him to be proud of himself, as I was proud of him."

What a touching story! I'm sure Dolly's dad had to be the proudest dad in the world!

h/t: People