The Seeds Dolly Sowed

Like the wildflowers Dolly Parton sang about, Jason Larimore learned to grow beyond his circumstances, build his own dreams, and give back to others.

 Mary Beth Sallee

Hart Co. News-Herald

 

“When a flower grows wild, it can always survive. Wildflowers don’t care where they grow.”

For Jason Larimore, those words were never simply lyrics to a Dolly Parton song. He carried them from Kentucky to Tennessee, Florida, California, Chicago, Ohio, Georgia, and Missouri. He carried them through difficult years, through uncertainty and setbacks, and into places and possibilities he once could only imagine.

However, long before Jason became a business owner capable of helping others, there was a time when he needed someone to help him.

Dolly Parton did.

Following Dolly’s recent death, Jason has found himself looking back at his own life and recognizing just how much of it was shaped by a woman who grew up with little in the mountains of East Tennessee but spent much of her life giving back.

“My life has been enriched every single day because of Dolly,” Jason said.

For Jason, that influence began long before the two ever met. He was 14 when his mother brought home Dolly’s “Eagle When She Flies” album. At the time, Jason said his family was very poor and moved frequently. Despite some difficult experiences during those years, including bullying in school, he said he focused his attention on something else.

“I didn’t let any negativity come into my heart,” Jason shared. “I just would daydream about working for Dolly Parton.”

Looking back on that period of his life, Jason knows how easily things could have gone differently.

“That little boy that didn’t have any internet, that didn’t have any friends, and his family turned its back on him, a lot of people give up hope at that time,” Jason said. “But I didn’t. I held on, and I just kept looking toward Dolly.”

No matter where his family moved, Jason made sure a little piece of Dollywood followed him. He would always have Dollywood and Dixie Stampede send him brochures.

“And so I would use my imagination, and I just knew that someday I was going to work for her,” he said.

Years later, when in his early 20s, Jason donated a kidney to his friend, Elizabeth. The process took two years, and afterward he found himself unable to work and struggling financially.

“I had lost every single thing that I had,” Jason said. “I was only 24. At the time, I had already started with hair school, but it took me two years to get that kidney out of me and into Elizabeth. Whenever I was staying up here in Fairdale, nobody would hire me at all.”

One morning, at one of the lowest points in his life, Jason called Dollywood.

“I woke up, and I had been crying my eyes out and just called Dollywood and asked to talk to human resources,” Jason said. “I spoke to a woman named Banissa Kinder. She listened to me for about an hour, just like you are right now. She was so sweet. She said, ‘Come on down here, honey. I got a job you could do.’”

But getting to Tennessee was another issue for Jason. He credits Debra Dudley, owner of Oscarware, with helping make the trip possible. Jason explained that Dudley knew he had donated his kidney, and when Jason told her Dollywood was willing to hire him, she gave him $500 to make the trip to Tennessee.

“She’s always been a blessing to me,” Jason said. “Debra Dudley got me down to Dolly, and Dolly took care of me while I was there. I worked for Dolly for three years.”

Jason still remembers the day the person he had imagined working for as a child suddenly became someone standing in front of him. He had been told to arrive at for work at 9 a.m. He arrived two hours early.

“The day that I met Dolly was early morning,” Jason said. “She was doing an interview at Heartsong Theater, and she just looked like a little pink dot up there, just shining bright. I thought that was gonna be as close as I ever got to her.”

Later that day, Jason was outside when Dolly returned to the park. Steve Summers, whom Jason described as part of Dolly’s wardrobe team, was nearby.

“I said, ‘Do you think I can get a picture of her?’ He said, ‘You could probably get a picture of her, but not with her,” Jason recalled.

Then, Dolly stepped from a white van, catapulting a moment that would stay in Jason’s memories forever.

“She stood in front of me, and she turned around and looked at me,” Jason shared. “She said, ‘Well, aren’t you dressed cute?’ And I was like, ‘Thank you,’ because I was in my bibbed overalls and things, and that was part of the uniform.”

A few moments later, Dolly called him over.

“She said, ‘Come on over here, honey.’ And she said, ‘Thank you for coming out and helping and everything,’” Jason recalled. “And she said, ‘Aren’t you the young man that gave his friend his kidney?’ I said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ She said, ‘That was a very sweet gift, and you coming down here to help me is a really sweet gift, too.’ She talked to me as if I was the only person in the world.”

As Jason stood there talking with the woman he had dreamed of working for since he was a teenager, something clicked.

“If you can see it and you can believe it, you can achieve it,” Jason said. “… just knew someday that moment was going to happen.”

After saying goodbye, Jason walked away, unaware that Dolly was preparing to begin a parade.

“I busted out of those big old 18-foot gates smiling like a hero that just won his medal,” Jason said. “…That little boy inside of me, that little boy that just knew that if you held onto a dream, for me it set my whole life on a whole new trajectory that I could have never imagined.”

That idea of holding onto a dream continued to follow Jason as he built his career, and so did the words to Dolly’s song “Wildflowers.” He said the song became something he carried with him as he ventured well beyond the place where he grew up.

“‘Wildflowers don’t care where they grow.’ That means that I went to Florida, I went to Tennessee, I went to California, I went to Chicago, I went to Ohio, and I went to Georgia. I went to Missouri,” Jason said. “All of those places with the same lyrics in my mind, that wildflowers don’t care where they grow.”

Another Dolly lyric would eventually take on an almost literal meaning in his life: “Build your own dreams, and climb your own ladder.”

Jason has been a barber for more than two decades. His career was not without setbacks, and he recalled facing difficulties in the workplace that eventually forced him to stand up for himself and change course.

“In those times I drew on the very same energy,” Jason said, always keeping Dolly in mind. “I didn’t think a negative thought about the people that was doing bad to me.”

Eventually, the words about building his own dreams and climbing his own ladder became more than inspiration. Jason is the owner of Fast Lane Fades in Louisville, having not only built a business for himself and the community but also a life in which he is able to give to others.

“Those lyrics, ‘Build your own dreams and climb your own ladder,’ that’s exactly what I did,” Jason said. “And being that I’d done that, that has allowed me to take care of my mom and daddy, take care of my nephew. I’ll just say I take care of my family.”

For Jason, though, Dolly’s example was never simply about succeeding. It was also about what a person does once they are in a position to help someone else. Jason said growing up poor gave him a connection to Dolly’s story, but he does not view his own giving simply through the lens of helping people who are in need.

“It’s not so much about being in need, because it was more about giving toward the greater good,” Jason said. “…If you give with an open, loving heart, then that’s how you’ll receive things in life.”

That philosophy is now visible much closer to home. Through Fast Lane Fades, Jason has supported Toys for Tots, athletic team fundraisers, teachers and academic programs, families who had fallen on hard times, and others throughout the community. It is something he said he envisioned long before he owned a business.

“I knew early on that I wanted to give just as much as I got,” Jason said. “Dolly, through example, gave so selflessly.”

When asked what he believes Dolly would think if she could see the path his life took after their meeting, Jason did not hesitate: “I know she’d be very proud.”

For Jason, that belief is not based simply on the business he built or what he has been able to accomplish. He believes Dolly would see what those accomplishments have allowed him to do for others.

“As far as a businesswoman, she’d be like, ‘That’s great,’ because she could see how I’ve been able to give back,” Jason said. “But I know that whenever Dolly seen my heart, whenever she held my hand and she seen my heart at that moment at Dollywood, I don’t think there’s anything in the world that made her more proud of knowing that I had just gave one of the most selfless gifts in the world and being, that I made that conscious decision to do it then, that I would carry out that same character for the rest of my life. So I don’t think she’d be surprised. I know that she’d be very proud.”

Jason continues to return to Dollywood every year for his birthday, and two years ago, roughly 20 years after his time working there, he returned for a reunion and once again participated in a parade.

But Dolly’s place in Jason’s life is not confined to Dollywood or photographs from years ago. Dolly’s influence continues to shape the decisions he makes even now.

“Whenever I get ready to do anything, and I mean this, I ask myself, ‘What would Dolly do?’” Jason said.

Now, following her death, Jason hopes the words that carried him through some of his own hardest years might do the same for someone else.

“For anyone that reads the story, I hope that they will, in their darkest of days, give Dolly an opportunity to pull them up out of it and to draw from her story and her heart, to use her influence,” Jason said. “I hope that they will draw on Dolly’s messages of hope and let that light some of their path, because I know that it’s helped me with every step of the way in my life.”

Now, more than three decades after a young boy with little more than an imagination, song lyrics, and Dollywood brochures dreamed of where his own life might take him, Jason Larimore has traveled far beyond where his story began. He built his own dream, climbed his own ladder, and found ways to give back along the way.

And through all of it, the words he carried with him from place to place still seem to tell his story best: “When a flower grows wild, it can always survive. Wildflowers don’t care where they grow.”