We Will Always Love You, Dolly

MARSHALL, MN — My dirty little secret is that I enjoy Hollywood gossip; the juicier (and less likely to be true), the better. I had seen articles about Dolly Parton’s health and the events she had canceled in the past few months, but I felt no fear: Dolly is invincible. Except she wasn’t. When I saw her face pop up on one of my regular gossip sites on Tuesday, my heart dropped. I instinctively knew this wasn’t another “story” about Dolly but her obituary. A legend was gone.

Growing up, “Islands in the Stream” by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton was on regular rotation in my home. My mom loved that song and I’m sure I sang along to it too. Dolly wasn’t someone you could easily ignore with her big hair (okay, wigs) and distinctive Southern twang. And while it’s true that her rhinestone ensembles may have sparkled brightly, it was her mega-watt smile that lit up the room. She would have been someone easy to mock but we instead revered her for her kindness, compassion and generosity.

To be honest, country music isn’t my jam, but books are. Imagination Library didn’t exist when I was a young child so when I first heard about it from friends who had enrolled their kids in the program, I was intrigued. The idea of providing a monthly book to young children at no cost to their families – well, it seemed very Dolly-like. She was someone who knew the power of imagination from her own childhood and shared that magic with millions of kids across the world, including right here in Southwest Minnesota.

The United Way of Southwest Minnesota is proud to be the local sponsor of Imagination Library and has funded the program for more than 20 years, thanks to our generous donors. Together, we have done so much to promote early literacy and help local children build their own home libraries with nearly 575,000 books mailed since August 2006. That’s a lot of families coming together to read Hungry Caterpillar and Llama, Llama, and so many other books! 

All children from birth to age five who reside in any of the following school districts are eligible to join the Imagination Library: Canby, Dawson-Boyd, Echo, Fulda, Hendricks, Ivanhoe, Lake Benton, Lakeview, Marshall, Minneota, Murray County Central, Russell-Tyler-Ruthton, Tracy Area, Westbrook-Walnut Grove or Yellow Medicine East. Visit www.unitedwayswmn.org/il to enroll or to donate to the program.

Dolly may no longer be with us, but her legacy will continue through Imagination Library and how she lived her life. She taught us about compassion and kindness, and how to give back and to shine bright, but most of all – she taught us what absolute joy looks like.

Goodbye, Dolly. We did cry because you were exactly what the world needed, and we will always love you.

Tanya Moat
CEO
United Way of Southwest Minnesota