Robert Lee Parton never learned to read or write.
From childhood, he worked the land, and the school always remained on the other side of a fence he could not cross. That lack stayed with him throughout his life, and Dolly, his daughter, witnessed how heavily it weighed on him.
She could not give him back his childhood. She could not put a book in his hands when he was a child or erase the years he had lost. But she could do something to keep other children from growing up with that same deprivation.
In 1995, Dolly founded the Imagination Library in Sevier County, Tennessee, the same place where her father had grown up without ever having the opportunity to learn to read.
At first, the project was simple: send free books to children in her own county.
But Dolly did not stop there.
The program began to expand across borders and, over time, became an international initiative. Today, the Imagination Library has delivered nearly 150 million books in five countries, sending one free book each month to children from birth until they start school.
Robert Lee lived to see it.
Before he died, in the year 2000, he was able to know that what had been born from one of his greatest hardships had been transformed into something much greater than his own family.
Dolly never had children of her own.
But in a way, she ended up having millions: one for every child who has received one of her books and been able to open it before going to sleep.
Her father could not read her a story when she was little.
She made sure that millions of children could hear one.
And as long as a child, somewhere in the world, opens one of those books, Dolly Parton will keep telling a story.
And deep within each of them, he will always be there.