If someone had walked into a tiny cabin in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee in the 1950s and pointed to a little girl singing into a homemade tin-can microphone, they would have been forgiven for laughing at the prediction.

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"One day," they might have said, "the King's Guard at Buckingham Palace will honour her."

The claim would have sounded absurd.

Not unlikely. Absurd.

The girl was Dolly Parton.

She grew up in poverty as one of 12 children in rural Tennessee, in a family with very little money and no running water. The little girl who would become one of the most loved entertainers on Earth spent her childhood dreaming big from a place that offered every reason not to.

Yet this week, following her death at age 80, the King's Guard performed 9 to 5 outside Buckingham Palace in tribute to the woman that little girl became. The royal family described her as someone who brought "joy, comfort and inspiration to so many", including the millions of children who received free books through her Imagination Library.

Think about that for a moment.

A little girl from the mountains who sang into a tin-can microphone and went on to touch lives across continents.

Since her death, the tributes have flooded in. Musicians. Actors. Politicians. Authors. Ordinary people. Generation after generation sharing stories about how Dolly Parton shaped their lives.

This isn't celebrity worship. The world is not mourning Dolly Parton because she was famous. The world is mourning her because we are so grateful. There is a difference. Celebrity invites admiration. Character inspires gratitude. Dolly's genius was never confined to her music. It was her humanity.

For decades she was underestimated, mocked and reduced to stereotypes by people who mistook........

© The Examiner