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2:50 pm, August 26th, 2026 - 17 comments
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Dolly Parton was raised in a shack in Sevierville in eastern Tennessee – a poor family in a poor town in a very poor state. What she has left behind is social progress any left leaning government would be proud of.
So, in her own words, why did she start her massive literacy programme?
Well, this actually started several years ago because of the kids in my own hometown in Sevierville County. Actually, we were just having a local program there to give children a book a month from the time they were born ’til they started kindergarten.
And I actually came up with the idea because my own family, being brought up, as you mentioned, from such a poor family. A lot of my people didn’t get an education. My own dad couldn’t read nor write, but he was a smart man in spite of that, and I just saw how crippling that was to so many of my relatives, thinking what great minds they had, but they didn’t have the chance to do a lot of things they would have had they had an education.”
The Bible was our main book. My mama used to read from that. But we couldn’t bring books home from school because of all the kids. We couldn’t, you know, they’d just tear them up and, you know, chew them up and whatever else.
So it was because of my love for my family and the great need that I saw that, you know, they had, you know, for that, and so it started as a small thing in my hometown, and it grew and it grew and it grew and before I lost my parents, they were both so very proud of the success of the Imagination Library.”
Inspired by her father’s illiteracy, the program mails free books every month to children under the age of five.
“Before he passed away, my Daddy told me the Imagination Library was probably the most important thing I had ever done. He was the smartest man I have ever known, but I know in my heart his inability to read probably kept him from fulfilling all of his dreams. Inspiring kids to love to read became my mission.”
In 1988, Parton launched the Dollywood Foundation in Sevier County, Tenn., her home county, with the goal of improving the high school graduation rate. Two years later, she launched the Buddy Program, which promised $500 to every Sevier County seventh and eighth grader who graduated from high school. Parton also
The country music star played an important role in the development of the coronavirus vaccine developed by Moderna at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Parton donated $1 million in honour of her friend Dr. Naji Abumrad — whose son, Jad Abumrad, went on to host the WNYC podcast “Dolly Parton’s America” about her life and cultural impact. The $1 million donation funded critical early stages of the vaccine, which eventually saw $1 billion worth of investment from the federal government.
In March of 2021, the singer then received a dose of the COVID vaccine. She documented the experience in a social media post, singing “vaccine, vaccine,” to the tune of her song, “Jolene,” and encouraging others to get vaccinated.
The Moderna contribution was not Parton’s first VUMC donation. Years earlier, she had donated $1 million to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in honour of her niece, who was treated for leukemia there in the 1990s. And, in 2022, she also gave another $1 million for paediatric infectious disease research.
Parton also invested in healthcare in East Tennessee. She hosted a benefit concert for the construction of LeConte Medical Center in Sevier County, where she also made an additional donation. The hospital now features a “Dolly Parton Birthing Unit.”
While Dollywood, the Pigeon Forge amusement park, is a business venture, the investment has been a catalyst for the rural county’s economy.
The theme park has become the state’s top attraction, hosting more than three million visitors every year and generating more than $220 million in state and local taxes. The company also covers 100% of tuition and fees for employees pursuing higher education at certain partner universities.
“The greatest privilege of my life has been helping Dolly bring her dreams to life at Dollywood,” Eugene Naughton, Dollywood Parks & Resorts president, said in a statement. “While we grieve her loss, we are honored and committed to carry her light forward. Her legacy will continue to shine in every melody sung, every smile shared and every dream kindled within these gates.”
I won’t ever have Dolly’s impact in literacy or health, but I love being inspired by Dolly and all she worked for. Congratulations Dolly on delivering for your own people and inspiring millions of people.
Dolly shows hers smarts and her heart. "Show business is a money-making joke. And I like a good joke”, in an early interview where Barbara Walters tried to patronise the hillbilly and her tits, and failed.
Walters was astonishingly rude, and Parkinson did the same when he interviewed her. How was it normal for an interviewer to sit there and effectively say "Let's talk a little about your big tits"?
Dolly did some good, as well as sometimes creatively working the country music genre with evocative lyrics that highlighted the good and bad times of working people. eg Mama's "Old Black Kettle", held together by some innovative fixes so that she could keep cooking for the family. For the childhood Dolly these seemed like the best of times.
Sometimes her songs embraced the Christian idea of struggling working people looking for their just reward in the afterlife when there doesn't seem much reward in the present as in her song "Daddy's Working Boots."
A much more recent song, from 2023 laments the politicians doing nothing to stop "The World on Fire"
Dolly Parton died on August 25 aged 80 years. https://people.com/dolly-parton-legacy-charity-12065985
She would stick at trying to further her vision and overcome disadvantages. The family hung together and helped. I remember reading when starting her career she wanted to perform in a distant town; an uncle drove the family car overnight, and she slept in it in order to participate.
Catherine Cookson in the UK brought the same determination and extra understanding of difficult living conditions to express her ideas about life. She poured herself into words and scenarios. She could not have children and rising from deep depression, her devoted husband encouraged her writing. Together they brought her many books to the fore about people and their myriad ways of behaviour whether poor or rich. She was a leading UK author. I think as strongly affecting as Winston Churchill. She made millions and left much to medical research and a trust by her and husband Tom funds people's projects in North-east England.
https://catherinecookson.com/charitable-trust/
OK – this isn't going to be popular at the moment, but it needs saying.
Charity is not enough. To sing its praises is to normalise the wildly disproportionate wealth that enables it to work. All those good causes that Dolly Parton championed should be completely normal activities that societies naturally do as a matter of course without a moment's thought, without the need for intervention by a philanthropic wealthy person, and never avoided through the bogus recourse to pseudo-economic nonsense like "it's too expensive".
Given the world as it is, it's obviously better that she did those things than she didn't. And the fact that she felt the obligation to do it anyway says a lot about the character of her heart and mind. The praise is deserved, but we should not generalise what she did into some sort of solution.
In what moment in history did we not need philanthropy?
Who pissed in your cornflakes this morning?
Charles Dickens?
It was the pissed of times, it was the worst urine?
Very clever, PR. We live in the times of the Great Micturation, where the billionaires practise trickle down economics.
@StephenD Probably the version spelt with two 'KKs', (Monty Python's 'The Bookshop'. I like the one with Marty Feldman.) We are all difficult customers and possibly when we find what we thought we were looking for we will reject it for some sensitive. personal idea like because 'robins wet their nests'.
Some people don't get to have cornflakes of a morning here in NZ, Puckish Rogue. That's the point that AB makes. Charity is not enough.
"An estimated 100,000 children in New Zealand go to school without breakfast every day, while broader studies show that roughly 1 in 5 children (20%) live in households experiencing food insecurity where food runs out." So AI tells me.
Save the lecture.
Turning a tribute to someone who actually helped people into a self righteous soapbox doesn't feed a single kid in NZ.
Open Mikes that way >>>
Cornflakes this morning, then?
Can't afford them, they're very expensive
When millions of people liked Dolly's music and chose to give her money for it, what was the injustice?
I think there is something eating away at our brains. Some of us can't be gratified and praise people doing good without saying that it doesn't solve all our problems and quote the hundreds, millions of needy children and people still in the world not being helped or saved. Well that is fact. Another fact is that many people try to do good.
We will be grateful to those that do, which will be followed by enabling them to work up that goodness and the desire to multiply it and the good effects in societal wealth and welfare. Those two W's and the word join should have a special draw implied when said, and become watchwords for our coming years and decades.
We should also ask what sort of background the people who don't do good things come from; identify and start changing it. Then we wouldn't have so many smart shits turning human life rowards a mechanised technical hell. Charlie Chaplin showed us how in his film, Modern Times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Times_(film)
Please lighten up and be grateful for small mercies. Encourage more of them. Chaplin and others have shown us the problem since 1936 and before also after. I'm sick of the same arguments and diatribes rolling out ineffectually.
My 'tribe' are of people who worked for better things in the 20th century. There is a new tribe of people now who are wiping out all that was achieved; could be called a die-a-tribe. Give us oldies a gift and save our society that we had as a work in progress, but now regress.