What Dolly Parton Taught Us About Building a Life (and a Trip) Worth Loving

A tribute from Lois & Claire

We're heartbroken this week, along with pretty much everyone else. Dolly Parton passed away on August 25, 2026, at 80 years old, and it's been sitting heavy on us here at Lois & Claire, not because we ever met her, but because so much of what we've tried to build into this little travel company, she'd already been doing, bigger and better, for sixty years.

So instead of our usual trip recap, we wanted to talk about why.

She made warmth a whole personality. Dolly never made you feel like you had to earn her kindness. She just handed it to everyone: the fan at the fence outside Dollywood, the songwriter she'd never met, the kid in rural Tennessee who'd never owned a book of their own. That's the exact feeling we chase on every single Lois & Claire trip: nobody's an outsider by day two. You show up solo, you leave with a group text you'll still be in five years from now.

She had a big heart and zero interest in hiding it. Cynicism was never her move, even when it would've been the easier, cooler one. Ours either. We are, unapologetically, a company that believes a trip should make you cry a little from laughing and a little from how full your heart is, sometimes in the same afternoon.

She never let "polished" mean "guarded." Dolly was rhinestones and wigs and a nine-to-five joke that never got old, and underneath every bit of the sparkle was one of the sharpest, most generous business minds in entertainment. We take the same lesson personally: you can run a serious, well-loved small business and still want everyone to bring their glitter. Sequins optional. Strongly encouraged.

She used her platform to actually change things. This is the one we keep coming back to. In 1995, Dolly started Imagination Library in her home county in Tennessee, honoring her father, who never learned to read. What began as one county mailing free books to kids from birth to age five grew into a program that's now reached millions of children across the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Ireland, one free book at a time, every month, no strings attached. If you're looking for a way to mark this week, a gift to Imagination Library in her name is a genuinely lovely one.

And if you want a little bit of Dolly's sparkle in your own home this week, we are obsessed with these cute prints by an artist named Frances, who has put together a small collection of Dolly-inspired pieces, the kind of bold, glittery, joyful pieces that feel exactly right on a wall right now. A portion of each print is going directly to Dolly's Imagination Library.

We didn't know Dolly, but we have used her as a guiding light to be better humans. We've spent years quietly trying to build a company in the spirit of the same three things she never stopped being: kind, generous, and completely herself, rhinestones and all. Seems like a pretty good blueprint for a travel company, or a life.

Rest easy, Dolly. Thank you for showing all of us how it's done.

xo, Em & Jill