Robert Lee Parton didn’t have a single dollar in his pocket. 😓
So when his fourth daughter was born in a one-room cabin in the mountains of Tennessee, he paid the doctor with the only thing he had on hand: a sack of cornmeal. It was January 1946, and no one in that house without running water or electricity could have imagined that the girl would be named Dolly Parton and that one day the entire world would know her name.
She grew up among twelve siblings and the hardships of Appalachia, and at 18 she did what few dared to do: she boarded a bus bound for Nashville with little more than a dream. There she built a career that led her to sell more than 100 million records and create the Imagination Library, through which she gave away more than 200 million books to children around the world.
Dolly died yesterday in Tennessee, at the age of 80, surrounded by her loved ones. And although she passed away peacefully, that image she herself recounted with pride remains forever: that of a poor father paying with corn for the birth of the woman who would later give the world far more than she ever received. 🌾