The books arrived, like clockwork, once a month. They were often wrapped in transparent paper so that you could see at least part of the cover. The return address read “Imagination Library,” and I’d immediately know where it came from.
“We got another book from Dolly,” I’d say. My wife and I would tear it from the wrapping, sometimes immediately read it to our kids, and add it to a large and growing collection. Some of the books were so well-loved that they fell to pieces, slowly but surely — tiny hands had turned the pages so very many times.
We raised our kids in Tennessee, and so were among the first families with access to Dolly Parton’s literacy program for young people. She started the program in 1995, in Sevier County, and by 2000 she took it national. If you signed your child up at birth, you got one free children’s book per month, every month, for five years.
I don’t even clearly remember how we joined. I thought we signed up in the hospital when our first kid was born.
My wife, Nancy, doesn’t even remember filling out a form. The books just “magically appeared,” she said. The hospital staff might have done it for us.
But no matter how we enrolled, the books were part of our lives for more than a decade. Each of our three children participated, and when they graduated from the program at age 5, they got a letter from Dolly.
“My, how time flies,” it began. “It seems it was only yesterday when your family and friends read you your first story.” It contained a sweet exhortation: “Just remember the lessons my family taught me — dream big dreams; learn everything you can learn; and care for all those who care for you.”
But it’s the ending that gets you. “You are terrific, and remember … I Will Always Love You.”
I was in Nashville when Dolly Parton died. I found out from my son. He texted the news to our family group chat in all capital letters.
Grief washed over me.
Dolly might have been the most beloved living American, but in Tennessee she was something different. In this state, she just meant more. One of my students, a young woman, said, “This must have been what it was like in London when the Queen died.” And she was not alone.
I wasn’t in London when Queen Elizabeth II died, so I can’t know, but when my student said that, I knew what she meant. Dolly’s death was a seismic emotional moment.
It’s not because she was famous and successful and this was her home. Nashville is used to fame. And it’s not because she never forgot her roots. A central theme of country music is “Don’t forget your roots.”
It’s because she loved us. Unconditionally. Extravagantly.
Imagination Library alone would represent the legacy of a thousand lifetimes. In 2018, its 100 millionth book was given to the Library of Congress. In 2023, it gave away its 200 millionth book. And by 2024, one in seven children under the age of five in America was receiving a book every month from Dolly Parton. Today, according to the Imagination Library, it is one in six.
Sit with that for just a moment. It’s hard to even fathom the impact of such generosity.
But that’s only the beginning of the ways in which Dolly touched our lives.
When our kids got a bit older, it was time to go to Dollywood, my favorite amusement park in America (sorry, Disney World). The park sits in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. It’s idyllic to the point of absurdity. Imagine riding roller coasters, eating good southern comfort food in the shade, all while listening to Dolly’s distinct and beautiful voice. Her music, including her gospel music — which always touched our hearts — pervaded the park.
It wasn’t just families who went to Dollywood; it was schools as well. My kids’ small Christian school took every sixth grade class to Dollywood. It was their reward for finishing elementary school, and it was a highlight of the year.
And when you got older still, you learned even more about who Dolly was and what Dolly did.
She helped build hospitals. She gave immense sums of money to fund disaster relief. When wildfires tore through the Great Smoky Mountain region in 2016, she provided $1,000 per month to every family in Sevier County that lost a home. She then surprised each family with a $5,000 final gift.
In April 2020, when the Covid pandemic killed tens of thousands of Americans in a single month, she gave $1 million to Vanderbilt to help fund the research that led to the Moderna vaccine.
Even with all that, we may never know the full extent of her philanthropy.
In 2022, Michael Harriot, a writer from South Carolina, posted this: “Here’s a quietly wonderful thing I noticed: If you talk to someone who was in choir or band at a majority Black HS, you’ll eventually discuss those annoying fund-raisers for uniforms, instruments, etc. & a SURPRISING number will casually say: ‘Oh, Dolly Parton paid for ours’”
If you grew up in the South, you knew that Dolly Parton was the best of us. She embodied the charm and self-deprecating humor that can make the South so appealing to visitors and new arrivals. But there are lots of charming people from the South.
Dolly also knew that the South was a place of deep pain. The New South can look prosperous on the surface, but many of us, my wife included, are only one generation removed from grinding poverty. Dolly’s two-room childhood cabin doesn’t look all that different from my father-in-law’s tiny childhood home on Monteagle Mountain.
The South is America’s most churchgoing region, but when I think of Dolly’s life, I think of a concept from Judaism — tikkun olam, which means “repairing the world.”
Repair can be literal and physical — the money she gave rebuilt homes and put clothes on people’s backs — but it can be spiritual as well. You can repair a heart and soul with love.
And when you love so many people so intensely, they will love you back — even across sometimes-vast cultural divides. That’s how you live a life where you can star in a movie called “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” and have millions of Southern Baptists mourn you when you die.
That’s how you can amass a staggering fortune and still have the Democratic Socialists of America lament your passing and pay tribute to you as a “hero of the working-class.”
And it would be wrong to say that she did this while being milquetoast or by keeping all her beliefs to herself. She wasn’t partisan — she refused the Presidential Medal of Freedom from both President Biden and President Trump — but she was a person of conviction.
She would sometimes touch the third rails of American politics, but in her inimitable Dolly way. In our most toxic year, 2020, she was asked about one of our most divisive subjects, Black Lives Matter.
Her response was perfect: “I do understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen. And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”
Who can argue with that?
In 2022, she co-hosted the Academy of Country Music Awards and said, “I don’t want to be political, and this is not. I’d rather pass a kidney stone than do that. But I want us to send our love and hope to our brothers and sisters in Ukraine.”
What is the common theme? When she saw pain and suffering, she responded, in word and in deed.
Dolly’s appeal wasn’t just rooted in who she was — a generational musical talent who possessed one of the most charming personalities in show business. It wasn’t just rooted in what she did.
It was also rooted in when she lived — in the middle of the most hateful years in modern American history, when red detests blue and blue detests red.
But no matter if you are the strictest fundamentalist from the hills and hollers of East Tennessee or a gay couple living in the most progressive city in the world, you knew — you absolutely knew — that Dolly loved you and wished you well.
Right after I saw my son’s text, I did the same thing that millions of other Americans did. I listened to our favorite Dolly Parton song. For me, it’s her rendition of a great Christian anthem called “He’s Alive.” It’s an Easter song, and at the crescendo — with a choir singing in full voice — Dolly sang, “He’s alive, and I’m forgiven. Heaven’s gates are open wide.” Her joy and her faith radiate from her face and voice.
We will always love you, Dolly. Rest in peace. Heaven’s gates are indeed open wide.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post What Dolly Did for Tennessee Is What She Did for the World appeared first on New York Times.
