In case you’ve driven through Georgia recently and wondered why the flags were at half-staff, they’re in honor of Dolly Parton. While Dolly — “Mrs. Parton” feels like something better reserved for the pages of the New York Times — was most associated with the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, she married her husband in the northwest Georgia city of Ringgold in 1966. As stated in the governor’s executive order lowering the flags, the name reminded her of “rings of gold,” and she considered this a good omen for her marriage; she was married to Carl Thomas Dean for nearly 59 years before his death in 2025. It’s fair to say that bond was matched by the public’s sentiment toward her. She earned that rarest of honors for those in public life: “no one ever had a bad word to say about her.” But this is a column about the intersection of Georgia public policy and our daily lives, and for that, she did her best to address an issue that still requires attention today: improving childhood literacy. In the days after her death, many people have rushed to acknowledge how much they benefitted from her Imagination Library, a program that provides books free of charge to children from birth until age five. The program began in 1995, distributing books only to children in Sevier County, Tennessee — famous, of course, for being both Dolly’s home county and the site of Dollywood. In a 2018 interview with National Public Radio, she explained that the program was a way to honor her father.…
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