“Serve your wives...serve your husbands, serve your families...serve your neighbors...serve your cities...serve the poor. Join others who serve. Serve, serve, serve! That’s the challenge. For in the end it will be the servants who save us all.”
Our Quote of the Week is inspired by Dolly Parton, a true artist and humanitarian who passed away at the age of 80 this week. We marvel at the many ways in which she used her life experience and creativity to serve others.
The quote we have chosen this week, taken from Sargent Shriver’s Speech at the National Conference of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and Staff, is a quintessentially Shriveresque expression of the material, emotional, and spiritual importance of service. Shriver, who was 70 years old at the time, reflected on the continued importance of the Peace Corps in a rapidly changing, dangerous world. He urges his audience of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers to remember the origins of the Peace Corps, saying:
“We risked everything then in a leap of faith that the Peace Corps would succeed. We risked everything that Volunteers would respond. We were dedicated thus to the pursuit of peace—which means we oppose the idea that war is inevitable! We believe that with God’s help we can get rid of war! We are a Corps, a band of brothers and sisters, united in the conviction that if we work hard enough to eradicate our fears and increase the reach of our love we truly can avoid war—and achieve peace within ourselves, within our nation, and around the world.”
We can see this same values-based approach to leadership and service in the life and career of Dolly Parton, a gifted singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur who used the lessons learned from her childhood growing up in poverty in rural Tennessee to address key gaps that families dealing with economic instablity struggle to fill every day. Her humanitarian efforts include:
- The Imagination Library, which has distributed free books to over three million children in five countries;
- Her Dollywood Foundation, which hands out scholarships and grants to US residents, including to high school seniors who need assistance with their post-graduation plans;
- The Dollywood theme parks and resorts, whose employees receive benefits that are by and large unheard of in the hospitality sector in the US, including 100% tuition subsidies at dozens of educational programs, free child care, a free on-site health center and fully covered medical, dental, vision and life insurance, free meals, retirement plans, and profit sharing, and other benefits.
As with Sargent Shriver, Dolly Parton’s acts of service focused on ensuring that every human being can live a life of dignity. This focus was also seen in the way she supported marginalized groups, including the LGBTQ+ community. She found effective ways to communicate messages of support and love with progressive and conservative audiences alike, escaping the pitfalls of political rhetoric that lead to polarization, and making her one of the more beloved musical artists of our time.
Sargent Shriver and Dolly Parton’s very different life paths remind us that we can use our own distinct experiences, skills, and talents to serve others in ways that suit us and that are of use in our communities. Who we are and who we know is not important, as long as we “serve, serve, serve.”
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