Why September 25 Is Dolly Parton Day
Why September 25 Is Dolly Parton Day.
Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026, at age eighty. Within three weeks, mayors, county executives, borough presidents, and state legislators from Tennessee to Pennsylvania to California had converged on the same date to mark her speical day: September 25.
Written, that’s the US date format of 9/25. Read aloud, it’s “9 to 5.”
That’s the song she wrote for the 1980 film of the same name, “9 to 5”, and it’s the reason nearly every one of these proclamations names that date. 9 to 5 starred Parton, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin as three coworkers who turn the tables on their controlling, sexist boss, played by Dabney Coleman. The title refers to the standard American workday, the hours most people trade for a paycheck, and the film turned that grind into a comedy about three women taking their office back. Parton wrote the theme song on set, reportedly tapping out the rhythm on her acrylic nails between takes. It became her only solo Billboard Hot 100 number one, an Oscar nominee, and eventually a Broadway musical. Forty-six years later, it’s also become shorthand for how a country decided to honor the Queen of Country.
Two other dates sat right there, unused. January 19 was her birthday, already proclaimed in Tennessee by Governor Bill Lee eight months earlier for her eightieth, while she was alive to see it. August 25 was the day the news went out and the country stopped and mourned. President Trump ordered flags to half-staff nationwide for a full week, and Tennessee, Texas, and North Carolina lowered theirs statewide. Lawmakers passed over both her birth and death dates. What they did instead was focuon on the song she made about ordinary people at ordinary jobs, written by a woman who was once ordinary herself.
There’s a precedent for this kind of date-related holiday. May 4th became Star Wars Day for the same reason: the film phrase “May the Force be with you,” sounds like May the 4th on calendar. Nobody legislated that one either. Fans just started saying it, and it stuck. Dolly Parton Day has the same flow, played by state legislatures instead of internet fandom.
Different USA States, Same Idea
Nobody coordinated this but everyone had the same idea.
Tennessee. State Senator Jessie Seal’s “9 to 5 Day” bill goes before the General Assembly when it convenes on January 12, 2027. Several East Tennessee counties have already issued their own September 25 designations without waiting on Nashville.
Pennsylvania. Representative Ben Waxman circulated a co-sponsorship memo for a resolution recognizing September 25, 2026, crediting Parton’s impact on early childhood literacy across rural and urban districts alike.
New York. Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal proclaimed the date on behalf of 1.6 million residents, citing her contributions to music, entertainment, literacy, and public health. He closed his statement with five words that already belonged to her: “We will always love you.”
Louisiana. Mayor Helena Moreno declared September 25 “Dolly Day” in New Orleans, with a French Quarter parade led by the Krewe of Dolly.
Kentucky. Lexington is staging a free evening at Moondance Amphitheater, with local musicians performing her catalog and donations collected for the Imagination Library.
Texas and California. Montgomery County and several West Coast jurisdictions have designated or proposed the same date.
These bodies didn’t coordinate with each other. They arrived at the same answer independently, within days of each other, with almost no debate about which date to pick. More will join in.
The Imagination Library
The Imagination Library shows up in nearly every September 25 proclamation, and that’s worth pausing on, because a book-mailing program has nothing to do with a workday or a wordplay date. It’s there for a different reason: several of these resolutions don’t just commemorate Parton, they use the occasion to renew a call for donations and local partnerships that keep the program running. September 25 becomes a day of action as much as a day of memory, a moment for school boards and literacy nonprofits to point back at the program by name while attention is on her.
Robert Lee Parton, her father, couldn’t read. In 1995, she started mailing books to children in the Tennessee county where she grew up. One county became the state, then the country, then several countries. The program has now sent more than 300 million free books to three million children, and it keeps running on the same kind of local funding these proclamations are angling for.
Plenty of famous people fund literacy programs. Fewer are the child of a man who couldn’t read the contract he signed. What she gave away was drawn from her own decades of experience, and that’s the distinction between a donation and a contribution that outlasts the person who made it.
The Biggest Tribute Dolly Never Saw
Every honor Parton received across sixty years arrived while she could respond to it. She could thank the Grammy voters, sign the governor’s proclamation, show up for the ribbon cutting. September 25 Dolly Parton Day is the first one that didn’t work that way. It was drafted by legislators she’ll never call, named by strangers she’ll never thank, on a date that only makes sense once you say it out loud.
She developed her masterwork across six decades and had no say in how it would be marked. Other people decided what to call it, when to mark it, and whether to mark it at all. That verdict came on its own schedule, from strangers in states she never lived in, who owed her nothing, and chose to remember her anyway.
Between Livelihood & Legacy —That’s Masterwork, Where your Wisdom leaves its mark.™
More on Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton: A Masterwork Study. Her life read through the six facets of Masterwork, from the Porter Wagoner years to the Imagination Library.
https://masterwork360.com/dolly-parton-masterwork/
Masterwork Doesn’t Have a Retirement Age. Dolly Parton Is Proof. What Threads demonstrates about stage, not age.
https://masterworkyears.com/dolly-parton/
Masterwork Wisdom Found in Dolly Parton’s Quotes Sixty years of her own words, sorted by the kind of wisdom each one represents.
https://masterworkyears.com/quotes-dolly-parton
Dolly Parton Wrote Her Last Chapter to Be the Best One: Seven decades of songs and stages, and the ending she wanted for the story.
https://masterworkyears.com/dolly-parton-last-chapter/
The Night I Saw Dolly Parton’s Show Without Dolly Parton Singing. Sherrie Rose at the Schermerhorn, on hearing the songs given to other voices.
https://likesup.com/the-night-i-saw-dolly-partons-show-without-dolly-parton-singing/
Nine to Five (1980 review by Roger Ebert)
“Nine to Five” is a good-hearted, simple-minded comedy that will win a place in film history, I suspect, primarily because it contains the movie debut of Dolly Parton. She is, on the basis of this one film, a natural-born movie star, a performer who holds our attention so easily that it’s hard to believe it’s her first film.
There have been other debuts this unmistakable; you could name Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, John Travolta. And what you’d be talking about in each case would not necessarily be a great dramatic performance in an important movie. You’d be talking about a quality of presence, a personal life force that seems to take over the screen.
Title song “Nine to Five” written and performed by Dolly Parton in the 1980 film.
9 to 5 film end credits show Doralee Rhodes (played by Dolly Parton in her first feature film appearance) becoming a country and western singer.
“Nine to Five” is only a fairly successful comedy. It has some very funny moments, and then it has some major ingredients that don’t work, including some of its fantasy sequences. But then it also has Dolly Parton. And she contains so much energy, so much life and unstudied natural exuberance that watching her do anything in this movie is a pleasure. Because there have been so many Dolly Parton jokes (and doubtless will be so many more), I had better say that I’m not referring to her sex appeal or chest measurements. Indeed, she hardly seems to exist as a sexual being in this movie. She exists on another plane, as Monroe did: She is a center of life on the screen. – Roger Ebert
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P.S. 25 years ago on 25th of September, the Village Voice magazine cover showed
the Twin Towers “Wish You Were Here” with article “After the Fall”
https://www.villagevoice.com/the-horror-then-the-danger-now/
