Dear reader,
It feels like a rather sad letter to be writing this morning, after waking to the news that Dolly Parton had passed away.
There will be plenty written about Dolly over the coming days, and rightly so, but for many of us she was simply one of those people who always seemed to have been there. I personally can remember my mum singing her heart out to Dolly, and somehow it's stuck with me ever since.
Perhaps that's why her passing feels as though it belongs to more than one generation. Her songs found their way into homes, cars and family memories, and stayed there.
So, in Gazette HQ this morning, we were all talking about her and decided we wanted to mark her passing in our own small way. We made room for one more in our memorial garden and named it The Dolly Parton Rose, where it will have a permanent little place on Stream Street.
There seemed little need to make a great ceremony of it. Just a rose, a name and a quiet place in the garden to remember someone who brought an awful lot of joy to an awful lot of people.
And, like so many people around the world, we'll all be listening to quite a lot of Dolly over the next few days. There are some songs you simply never tire of hearing.
Rest peacefully, Dolly.
We will always love you.
Yours sincerely,
The Gazette Newsroom
Stream Street
