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AIPROPX ReportABC News · 57m ago
Dolly Parton dead at 80: Tennessee pays tribute to hometown hero
Shows Good Morning America ShopGMA Interest Successfully Added We'll notify you here with news about Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? Off On Stream on Culture After Dolly Parton's death, Tennessee remembers its hometown hero Reaction to Dolly Parton's death in Tennessee George Walker IV/AP By Katie Kindelan August 26, 2026, 12:40 PM The death of country music legend Dolly Parton sent shockwaves around the world, but most notably in her beloved home state of Tennessee .
Parton died at the age of 80 on Tuesday in Nashville after a "brief battle" with cancer, according to her publicist.
The "Jolene" singer was born into a family of 12 children in the tiny mountain community of Pittman Center, Tennessee.
Though she went on to become one of the world's most successful and admired entertainers, Parton never forgot her roots, opening a theme park, Dollywood, in her home state in the 1980s and donating millions of dollars over the years to support her fellow Tennesseans.
When she turned 80 in January, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee declared her birthday, Jan. 19, as Dolly Parton Day in the state, calling her "Tennessee's favorite daughter."
Following her death on Tuesday, tributes to the star popped up across Tennessee, from her home in Brentwood to her star on the Music City Walk of Fame in Nashville to her hometown and the Grand Ole Opry, where Parton first found fame more than 50 years ago.
Parton left her small mountain hometown immediately after high school for Nashville, where she set out to become a superstar, as she told ABC News' Barbara Walters in a 1977 interview , early in her career.
She spent the rest of her life based in the Nashville area, leaving a lasting impact, according to the city's mayor, Freddie O'Connell.
"While Nashville wasn't her original home, she helped change it forever with an incredible, unprecedented thing: filling a little library in every childcare center in the city with books from her Imagination Library," O'Connell said in a statement Tuesday. "She's given Nashville -- and the world -- story and song and done so in a way that she remained universally beloved in challenging times."
Parton's Imagination Library initiative began in her home county of Sevier County, Tennessee, inspired by her father Robert Lee Parton, who could not read or write. The program, which provides free books each month to children from birth to age 5, regardless of their family's income, eventually expanded across the U.S. and internationally.
Parton was also known to give back to her home state when natural disasters struck.
When devastating wildfires swept through East Tennessee in 2016, Parton established the My People Fund, which provided $1,000 per month for six months to families who lost their homes.
Years later, in 2024, she announced she was donating $1 million of her own money to relief efforts in Tennessee following Hurricane Helene, with another $1 million donated by her businesses.
In 2020, Parton donated $1 million to Tennessee's Vanderbilt University Medical Center to support COVID-19 research. Two years later, she donated another $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center to support pediatric infectious disease research.
Fittingly, Parton's last public in-person appearance before her death was in Tennessee. She made a surprise appearance in June at the grand opening of a gas station and restaurant called Dolly's Tennessean Travel Stop in Cornersville, a town around 60 miles outside of Nashville.
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