In our annual Best of the West special, we present inspiring individuals and organizations who remind us of the better angels of our nature and our shared American goodness. First up: Dolly Parton.
In his first inaugural address, at a particularly fraught time in American history, President Abraham Lincoln gave us the glorious, famous expression “the better angels of our nature.” It was 1861. The country was hopelessly divided. The Civil War loomed. But Lincoln appealed to his “dissatisfied fellow countrymen,” invoked our common foundation as Americans, and made a pitch for peace. “We are not enemies, but friends,” Lincoln said. “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Editor’s Note: Stay tuned for the entire 2022 class of C&I Heroes who exemplify those better angels and the best of our American character.
Dolly Parton
She’s not just a queen of country music — she’s a queen of caring and generosity.
“It was the least I could do.” That’s what Dolly Parton said in 2018 after she donated $1 million to create the Hannah Dennison Butterfly Garden at the Children’s Hospital at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University. The namesake Hannah Dennison is Parton’s niece, who was treated for leukemia there as a child. “This is just a great group of doctors and nurses that provide the best of care,” Parton said, “and it was the least I could do.”
It seems like that’s her constant refrain. When bad things happen or when good things need a shot in the arm, Parton has a way of stepping up. Her weighty donation to the hospital was just one of the many ways Parton is always there with an open heart — and open checkbook — to be a hero and an inspiration. What other good deeds has Parton done? These are just a few of her greatest hits. She’s big on education: In 1991, through her Dollywood Foundation, Parton started the Buddy Program, which handed out $500 to every seventh and eighth grader who went on to finish high school in Sevier County, Tennessee, to give them a reason to stay in school. In 1995, she created the Imagination Library to donate books to children. She was inspired to do so because her father never learned to read. To date, the program has donated a book a month to 1.7 million children around the world. Early this year, her Dollywood theme park announced that it’s picking up the tab for 100 percent of its employees’ tuition, fees, and books — right in line with one of the Dollywood Foundation’s key tenets: “Learn more.”
In 2016, after wildfires ravaged East Tennessee, Parton put on a benefit concert to raise $13 million for people hit the hardest. In 2019, Parton was the first country artist to be named the Grammys MusiCares Person of the Year. “It’s a long, long way from hills of East Tennessee to the Hollywood Hills,” she said accepting the award, “but it has been a wonderful journey.” And a generous one. Most recently, Parton stepped up to give the coronavirus pandemic her best shot when she donated another $1 million to Vanderbilt University, which led to the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. “My longtime friend Dr. Naji Abumrad, who’s been involved in research at Vanderbilt for many years, informed me that they were making some exciting advancements toward research of the coronavirus for a cure,” Parton shared on social media. She announced her donation toward that research “to encourage people that can afford it to make donations. Keep the faith.”
Let Parton lead us all to keep the faith.
From our May/June 2022 issue
