Country music legend and Tennessee icon Dolly Parton has died at age 80.¶
Parton’s nephew Brian Seaver posted a video on her social media accounts announcing her passing.¶
“Dolly opened doors not just for me, but for her entire family to reach the potential we didn't even know was possible,” Seaver said in the video. “Dolly also opened doors for generations of singers, songwriters, musicians, and dreamers from every walk of life and across every continent. By her example, we believed that anything was possible. She never saw a door she couldn't open, and the doors she opened made and changed history.”¶
Parton was known worldwide as a multi-talented singer-songwriter, actress, businesswoman, and philanthropist. In Tennessee, she was beloved not just for her entertainment talents but also for her widespread charity work, especially in education. The daughter of a missionary, Parton grew up in poverty, living in a one-bedroom cabin for seven years of her childhood. Those experiences shaped her giving nature as an adult, as well as her passion for childhood education.¶
Education Philanthropy
Parton created the Dollywood Foundation, named after the Dollywood theme park, that bore her name, in 1988, just two years after the park opened. In its early years, the nonprofit offered scholarships to local high school students, but it blossomed into a much larger outreach program. Eventually, the foundation expanded to grant $15,000 scholarships to graduating seniors from all five high schools in Sevier County: Sevier County High, Pigeon Forge High, Seymour High, Northview Academy, and Gatlinburg-Pittman High.¶
Parton also founded the “Buddy Program,” in which seventh- and eighth-grade middle school students in Sevier County picked a friend to sign a contract with, requiring them to support and push each other to graduate high school. Once graduated, each would receive $500. The program led to a 6 percent decrease in Tennessee’s dropout rate.¶
In 1995, the foundation became Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, distributing books to children in Sevier County, where she grew up. At first, children under the age of 5 could receive free books each month. By 2000, it had become so popular that Parton said she wanted the program to be available to any community that would support it, and by 2006 it had expanded to 471 communities in 41 states. Since then, it has expanded to more than 1,800 communities in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.¶
The program aimed to increase childhood literacy in the state and was founded in honor of her father, who could not read or write.¶
“Before he passed away, my daddy told me the Imagination Library was probably the most important thing I had ever done,” Parton said in an excerpt from the Imagination Library website. “I can’t tell you how much that meant to me because I created the Imagination Library as a tribute to my daddy. 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.”¶
As of this year, the program has delivered books to more than 120 million children and sends roughly 3 million books to children each month.¶
