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Dolly Parton. One of the greatest country music performers of all time. One of the greatest human beings of all time.

What she did for literacy and for people living in poverty will never be forgotten. There was no one like her on stage. Or on Earth.

Her flamboyant performances and incredible songwriting impressed millions for more than 60 years.

That鈥檚 what I wrote on my social media accounts when I heard about the passing of the country music icon Tuesday. She was 80.

I grew up in Tennessee, just like Dolly, and felt as if she were part of the family. Nearly everyone else in the Volunteer State thought of Dolly as the state鈥檚 greatest treasure. After all, Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, even if he lived the final years of his life in Memphis.

Dolly was from the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, near Sevierville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, where poverty was widespread. Young Dolly wrote songs under the stars 鈥� her first at age 5. She played with a corncob doll with corn-silk hair and wore a coat of many colors, made of rags and sewn by her mother.

I grew up in the red clay mud of Middle Tennessee, near Cookeville, where farmers grew tobacco and young boys like me worked from sunup to sundown for their dads. We hoped for a new pair of shoes around Christmas and thought biscuits and gravy were a feast fit for a king.

I say all of that to underscore my deep connection to Dolly Parton 鈥� to her songs, certainly, but even more to her humanity. She was so down home that she married an asphalt contractor, Carl Dean, whom she met in a Nashville laundromat in 1966. Though she admitted to having celebrity crushes, they were married until the day he died in 2025.

Dolly鈥檚 big break in country music came as a performer on 鈥淭he Porter Wagoner Show,鈥� syndicated to 100 markets and taped in Nashville. When they needed a break, we occasionally saw some of the performers cutting up and blowing off steam at the Cookeville Boat Dock, about an hour from Nashville and a few minutes from where I lived as a kid.

Dolly wrote her famous song, 鈥淚 Will Always Love You,鈥� after she left Wagoner and struck out on her own.

About 15 years ago, I found out about Dolly Parton鈥檚 Imagination Library, which has sent millions of books to children around the world.

As a newspaper editor, I volunteered many hours teaching children to read and write. But nothing I did came close to Dolly鈥檚 ability to put books directly into the hands of children, from birth to age 5.

The commitment and generosity stopped me in my tracks, leaving me, as a newspaper editor, wishing more celebrities would endorse a love of reading.

They were also reasons I wasn鈥檛 surprised when she agreed to help rebuild the homes of victims of the devastating 2016 Smoky Mountain wildfires. Or when she donated $1 million to COVID-19 research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Dolly never forgot where she came from.

She understood poverty because she had lived it. She understood the limitations that come with growing up without much money. But she also understood the power of imagination, of music, of books and of believing that a child could dream of a world beyond the mountains or the red clay fields where they were born.

And then she spent much of her remarkable life helping other people do exactly that.

She never seemed to forget where she came from. She won 10 Grammys and starred in movies ranging from 鈥�9 to 5鈥� to 鈥淪teel Magnolias.鈥� She dressed tacky and had more plastic surgery than most of Hollywood.

She crossed over from country music into nearly every fabric of American life. She even owned an amusement park, Dollywood, where her trademark butterflies were plentiful 鈥� and about the only things wilder than her famous curves.

I remember vividly when she came to a University of Tennessee football game in 2023 and sang the school鈥檚 fight song, 鈥淩ocky Top.鈥� She brought 101,915 people (Neyland Stadium鈥檚 seating capacity) in Knoxville to their feet. I hope my alma mater (Class of 1984) honors her by wearing a butterfly on the back of their football helmets this season.

Despite the applause, accolades and admiration, she somehow remained connected to that little girl with the corncob doll.

That was Dolly Parton鈥檚 secret.

A beautiful voice.

An ability to write thousands of songs.

She had a heart bigger than any entertainer who ever learned to pick a guitar. 

She had a better sense of humor than any woman who ever wore a blonde wig in public 鈥� and laughed about it. 

And she never forgot the little poor girl from the Smokies that she once was. She spent the rest of her life making sure other children had a chance to reach for the stars, too.

James Bennett is managing editor of The Journal. Reach him at jbennett@abqjournal.com.