08/26/2026
When I was a kid, I got a new book in the mail every month for free until I was five years old.
I was just one kid in Sevier County. But that little program Dolly Parton started here in her hometown grew far beyond these mountains. Dolly's Imagination Library has now given more than 300 million books to children around the world and sends out more than 3.5 million every month.
Today, I work for the Boys & Girls Club of the Smoky Mountains, in one of our Education and Technology Centers named the Dolly Dream Center. Most days, I drive down Dolly Parton Parkway to get there.
It is difficult to explain to someone who isn't from Sevier County exactly what Dolly meant to this place.
The rest of the world knew a superstar. We knew her as our neighbor.
Her name is on buildings and roads here, but her influence runs much deeper than that. Generations of children grew up with books in their homes because of her. Generations of families have made their living because she chose to invest in the community that raised her. And when this community hurt, Dolly never had to be asked to remember where she came from.
I will never forget the fires of 2016. Fourteen of our neighbors died. Thousands of structures were damaged or destroyed, families lost everything, and parts of Gatlinburg and Sevier County looked almost unrecognizable. Within 48 hours, Dolly established the My People Fund. For six months, families who had lost their homes received direct financial assistance, $1000 dollars a month. In the final month, those families received $5,000 each. More than 900 Sevier County families received help.
She called it the ‘My People Fund’. Those three words tell you almost everything you need to know about Dolly.
Years later, when Hurricane Helene brought catastrophic flooding to East Tennessee and Appalachia, she stepped forward again. Dolly personally gave to relief efforts, while her businesses and foundation matched her personal contribution.
Again, these were her people.
But one of the remarkable things about Dolly was how enormous her definition of "her people" became.
In 2020, as a new virus was frightening the world and scientists raced to find a vaccine, Dolly donated $1 million to COVID-19 research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Part of that funding supported early research connected to the Moderna vaccine. A little girl born in a two-room cabin in the mountains of Sevier County grew up to help fund scientific research that would ultimately save millions of lives around the world.
Think about the reach of one life.
A child learning to read because a book appeared in the mailbox.
A family in Gatlinburg trying to rebuild after losing everything.
A family in East Tennessee cleaning mud from their home after a historic flood.
A researcher in a laboratory trying to understand a virus.
A worker earning a living and raising a family here in Sevier County.
And millions upon millions of people who simply found some joy, comfort, laughter, or understanding in one of her songs.
All touched, somehow, by the same woman from Locust Ridge.
There will be plenty written about Dolly Parton in the days ahead. There should be. There will be tributes to the songwriter, the singer, the actress, the businesswoman and the philanthropist. There will also inevitably be attempts to claim her for one cause or another.
I hope we resist that temptation.
Dolly was deliberate throughout her life about refusing to become a divisive political figure. Dolly refused the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Presidents of both parties. That was her choice, and honoring Dolly means honoring that choice. She belonged to Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, Tennesseans and folks on the other side of the world. She had an extraordinary ability to remind people that kindness did not require agreement.
Perhaps that is part of why I have found myself thinking today that Dolly Parton may have been the greatest American of her time.
Not because she held office. She never wanted to.
Not because she accumulated fame or wealth. Plenty of people have done that.
But because of what she chose to do with them.
She came from extraordinary poverty in the mountains of East Tennessee, achieved almost unimaginable success, and then spent the rest of her life giving back. She didn’t simply pull up the people who came after her, but she gave them the tools to climb even higher.
She never became too famous for Sevier County.
She never became too important for East Tennessee.
She never became too successful to call us her people.
I was one of the kids who received those books.
Today I work in a building that carries forward her belief that children from these mountains deserve every opportunity to dream bigger than the circumstances they were born into.
And tomorrow, I'll drive down Dolly Parton Parkway again.
For those of us fortunate enough to call Sevier County home, reminders of Dolly will be everywhere. But her greatest monuments will never be the buildings bearing her name, the road signs, the awards, or even the songs.
They will be the millions of people whose lives are a little better because Dolly Parton lived.
Our county has lost its most famous daughter. Tennessee has lost an icon. America has lost one of its very best.
And here in the mountains she never stopped calling home, we have lost one of our own.
Thank you, Dolly.
For the music. For the books. For believing in these mountains. For never forgetting where you came from.
And most of all, thank you for always remembering your people.
