Dolly Parton surprises dying fan to help him complete bucket list
Dolly Parton surprised a terminally ill fan with a personal phone call this month, allowing him to tick the item off his bucket list.
LeGrand Gold from Utah from was diagnosed with stage four colorectal cancer in 2021, but is now entering hospice care after being told by doctors that he only has months to live after treatment stopped working.
After learning of his original diagnosis, Gold, or ‘LG’, created a bucket list which included meeting Parton.
According to KSL TV, LG grew up in Tennessee and has been a huge fan of the country icon his whole life. “He was going through a really kind of down phase of just over everything,” his wife Alice Gold told the outlet. “So just got out the napkin and started saying, ‘What do you want to do? What do you want to do before you die?’”
Alice took to social media in the hopes that Parton might be able to help fulfil one of her husband’s big dreams.
On Friday (December 22), they answered a call with a Nashville area code in the morning, surprised to find Parton on the line when they had only expected a call from one of her managers.
“Hey, LG,” Parton said, referring to herself as “Dolly P”.
“I’m just happy to know that I’ve got a fan that devoted and that I’ve had a chance to watch that journey all these years,” she said. “I’m just happy that we got to kind of have our journey together in this lifetime. I always want to make people happy with my music and with the things I do and the things I say and I’m just happy to know that I’ve touched your life in some way. So thank you for honouring me with that.”
The ‘Jolene’ signer signed off from the call by singing “I will always love LG”, changing the lyrics to her hit song ‘I Will Always Love You’.
“She sang a song, put my name in the song. I feel like I’m immortal now,” LG told KSL. “That was really cool. It made me feel good.”
Alice told Parton that their family have regularly visited Dollywood over the years, adding that their children participated in Parton’s Imagination Library, which sends free books to children every month.
Other completed items on LG’s bucket list included visiting Las Vegas for a college basketball tournament and watching Natalie Merchant’s concert in Chicago.
“We’ve been flying above the silver lining for days,” Alice told KSL. “Out of the 11 items [on the list], we thought Dolly would be the impossible, but true to Dolly form, she once again reminds the world that dreams really do come true.”
Back in November, Parton scored her highest-charting album with the feature-stacked ‘Rockstar’.
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Hollie Geraghty
NME
