08/25/2026
Remembering Dolly Parton (1946–2026)
A note from Hearts United For Good
Dolly Parton died Tuesday August 25th, 2026 in Nashville at 80. The world knew her as the Queen of Country. We knew her a little differently, as the reason a whole lot of Charlotte kids got their first books in the mail.
We helped bring her library here
Back when we were the Hearts Beat as One Foundation, one of our first big projects was Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. We raised the money at an auction in the fall of 2014, partnered with Smart Start of Mecklenburg County, and launched the program in Charlotte in 2015, starting with the most under-resourced zip codes in the county and working outward. Habitat for Humanity, Novant Health, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, NoDa Brewing, and Truliant all pitched in.
The program has since grown far past us. Smart Start runs it countywide now, with state funding behind it, and it's still mailing free books to Mecklenburg County children every month. Which is exactly how it's supposed to work.
And we put her on a wall in NoDa
A few years later we commissioned a Dolly mural for a festival we were producing. The festival got swallowed by the pandemic. The mural went up anyway, in 2021 painted by Dustin Moates and the Southern Tiger Collective on the side wall of the Blind Pig, at N. Davidson and 36th. Dolly against the Blue Ridge, with "Love is Love" beside her.
She's been holding that corner ever since. If you're looking for something to do this week, go see her — she's a stop on the [NoDa ArtWalk starting at Salud](https://artwalksclt.com/noda-starting-at-salud), which will also walk you past a 60-foot fence covered in portraits of neighborhood dogs. Take somebody with you
Why she mattered to us
Dolly started the Imagination Library in 1995 because her own father couldn't read or write. The rules were simple: a free book every month to every child under five in a participating community. No means test. No application to be judged. No cost to any family, ever. More than 300 million books later, the rules haven't changed.
One detail we've never stopped thinking about, the book arrives addressed to the child, not the parent. Dolly's reason was four words: "To them, it's personal."
That's the whole job, right there. The person you're serving is a person. Address them like one.
She came by it honestly. She grew up one of twelve children in a one-room cabin in East Tennessee, poor in the way people who've never been poor don't quite understand. She wrote "Coat of Many Colors" about a jacket her mother stitched together from rags, and about the kids who laughed at her for wearing it. Then she told that story on purpose for the rest of her life — not as something she escaped, but as something that made her. She never treated being poor as a shameful thing that happened to other people.
Ten years on from the books, we're a food pantry rather than a literacy program. Different work, same conviction we picked up from her: your neighbor's need is not a verdict on your neighbor's worth.
Honor her with us. Read a book to a kid today. Go stand in front of that wall. And if you can, help us feed a family this week at (www.hugclt.org/donate).
Rest easy, Dolly. Thank you for the coat, the books, and the corner.
The team at Hearts United For Good
