When Coy “Denver” Parton died on July 23, 2026, at 82, his obituary in Sevierville, Tennessee, remembered him for the work he did as a crane operator. For years, he helped build bridges. Away from the job, he farmed his homestead and loved to hunt. He was born on August 16, 1943, a little over two years before Dolly.
There was another bridge builder in the Parton family. Denver’s older brother David retired from Simpson Construction as a superintendent. His work took him to bridge projects around Kingsport, Johnson City and Knoxville. The two brothers did different jobs in the same trade.
Dolly and her brothers were among the twelve children of Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton. Their father worked as a sharecropper, and the family lived in the Smoky Mountains. Dolly Parton remembered graduating from high school on a Friday night in 1964 and leaving for Nashville the next morning. She was eighteen.
In 1973, Dolly Parton opened My Tennessee Mountain Home with “The Letter,” a reading of the first letter she wrote to her parents after the move. She told them she’d made it to Nashville and missed the family, noisy siblings included. The cover showed the house where the Partons lived in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Dolly later said the title song takes listeners through the places she knew as a girl, from the schoolhouse and the church to her own house and the neighbors’.
After Denver’s death, his sister Stella Parton thanked people for their condolences on behalf of his daughters, Chris and Jennifer, and the rest of the family. She began her statement to People with a few words about Denver.
“My brother Denver was a deeply private person.”
Atchley Funeral Home said the service would be private.