Dolly Parton's Father Feared for His Children's Lives in a Brutal Fight With Neighbors

Dolly Parton grew up in the Smoky Mountains in a small home she shared with her mother, father, and 11 siblings. Parton looks back on her childhood fondly, but it wasn’t without its dark spots. She explained that while she was growing up, her family was involved in a feud with their neighbors. Parton said she never truly understood what sparked the feud, but it grew increasingly volatile. Parton’s father, Lee, decided to step in, but this resulted in a fight so vicious that he worried for the safety of his children.

Dolly Parton’s father confronted aggressive neighbors

Parton explained that many children lived in their neighbor’s house. Whenever the Parton kids walked home from school, the neighboring children would attack them. Lee cut a new path for his children, but the neighbors soon found it. 

Frustrated, Lee brought his two songs, David and Denver, and went to speak to the children’s parents in the hopes of resolving the matter. The meeting didn’t go as he planned.

“They attacked Daddy and the boys,” Parton wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “Daddy was a big man who could hold his own against great odds. But even he was not prepared to be set upon by a gang of five or six, including at least one woman.”

The fight was so one-sided and aggressive that Lee began to worry about his family’s safety.

“Another bunch had cornered David and Denver and were beating them badly,” Parton wrote. “Daddy says he got to the point where he was fearful for his life and the lives of his sons. He fought back mightily. He hurt two or three of them enough to take them out of the fight, including a woman who Daddy says was trying to beat him with something that looked like the handle of a hoe.”

Eventually, Lee managed to break away from his attackers and make it home.

“Daddy managed to break free enough to get the boys out of the spot they were in,” Parton wrote. “Some of the other family ran to the house, presumably to get guns, and Daddy and his sons ran for home.”

Dolly Parton said seeing her family after the fight was very upsetting

Parton said she felt very shaken by the sight of her father and brothers when they made it home.

“I will never forget the sight of Daddy, David, and Denver coming home all bloodied and beaten,” she wrote. “This was the man I thought was unbeatable. He was the highest authority I had ever known. He was the one we all went to for protection. Yet here he was, bloody and struggling for his life.”

She said this moment represented a turning point in her childhood.

“I had come to depend on Daddy to be there, strong and all-powerful, the way we come to depend on the earth to be solid, stable, and constant,” she wrote. “Seeing my father this way shook the very ground that my childhood security had been built on.”

Dolly Parton’s father landed in court after the fight

While Parton’s father and siblings managed to escape the fight, the animosity between the Partons and their neighbors still existed. It grew even more overblown when the woman who attacked Lee sued him. He’d broken her nose in the chaos, and she sued him. In response, Lee sued her.

“The next part of the saga was almost comical,” Parton wrote. “The woman with the broken nose had decided to sue Daddy in civil court. I don’t know what she expected to get from him, but with that same ‘blood from a turnip’ kind of logic, Daddy countersued.”

After a very public trial, the judge threw out the case.

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