Dolly Parton, civic icon

Dolly Parton will be called many things in the days after her death. A music icon. A cultural icon. A business icon. A champion of childhood literacy. One of America’s great philanthropists. I want to add one more: civic icon. 

Not a political one. Dolly was careful about that. She didn’t tell Americans how to vote or what to think about the controversy of the day. She didn’t tell us how to live. She showed us. 

In the most American fashion, when she saw things that needed doing, she did them. Kids in her home county needed books. She sent them books. Teenagers were dropping out of high school. She paid them to graduate. Her community needed jobs. She helped build an amusement park. Families lost their homes to wildfire. She gave them money.  

There is a civic philosophy in there, even if Dolly would never have called it one. Her instinct was to ask: What can I do? 

We tend to teach self-government through political structures: constitutions, elections, federalism separation of powers. But self-government also depends on the habits of the people doing the governing. Citizens have to believe they can act. Dolly did. 

Her father, Lee Parton, never learned to read or write. In 1995, Dolly decided to honor him by doing something about childhood literacy in Sevier County, Tenn. Her idea was simple: send kids books. Every month, from birth until kindergarten, a new book would arrive in the mail. What started in one Tennessee county became the Imagination Library, which has put hundreds of millions of books into children’s hands.  

There are complicated questions about how to improve literacy. Dolly didn’t need to settle any of them........

© The Hill