I think we need to focus more on great people than scoundrels.

We have a lot more great people in life than miserable ones. Character, generosity, and kindness are traits far more impressive to me than affluence, celebrity, and social standing.

Dolly Parton recently turned 78 years old. Here’s a person I have never met, but every person I have ever known who knows her says she is a superb human being…and you can pretty much see it in the way she relates to the world.

Character and goodness matters a lot more than just about anything else. I’ve been lucky enough to have been around great people in my life. I’ve been around creeps too, but this is a story of a genuinely beloved human being.

Dolly Parton, aside from being perhaps the most successful country artist of all time (and a damn good singer). Dolly has been a TV and film star, entrepreneur, and activist. She’s also written some 3,000 songs!

Every person I’ve ever met who really knows her says she is the most genuine, caring, loyal, kind-hearted person who ever made a mark in show business.

And she has also been the brunt of jokes and satire. She laughs it all off and makes a few jokes at her own expense.

What is no laughing matter is her philanthropy…

It is deeply impressive. Since the mid-1980s, Parton has supported many charitable efforts, particularly in the area of literacy, primarily through her Dollywood Foundation. Her literacy program, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a part of the Dollywood Foundation, mails one book per month to each enrolled child from the time of their birth until they enter kindergarten.

Currently, over 1600 local communities provide the Imagination Library to almost 850,000 children each month across the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Australia. The program distributes more than 10-million free books to children annually.

The Dollywood Foundation, funded from Parton’s net profits, has been noted for bringing jobs and tax revenues to a previously depressed region. Parton has also worked to raise money on behalf of several other causes, including the American Red Cross and HIV/AIDS-related charities.

In December 2006, Parton pledged $500,000 toward a proposed $90-million hospital and cancer center to be constructed in Sevierville in the name of Dr. Robert F. Thomas, the physician who delivered her.

She announced a benefit concert to raise additional funds for the project. The concert was played to about 8,000 people. That same year, Emmylou Harris and she allowed their music to be used in a PETA ad campaign that encouraged pet owners to keep their dogs indoors rather than chained outside.

In 2003, her efforts to preserve the bald eagle through the American Eagle Foundation’s sanctuary at Dollywood earned her the Partnership Award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Parton received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution at a ceremony in Nashville on November 8, 2007.

For her work in literacy, Parton has received various awards, including Association of American Publishers Honors Award (2000), Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval (2001) (the first time the seal had been awarded to a person), American Association of School Administrators – Galaxy Award (2002), National State Teachers of the Year – Chasing Rainbows Award (2002), and Parents as Teachers National Center – Child and Family Advocacy Award (2003).

In response to the 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires, Parton was one of a number of country music artists who participated in a telethon to raise money for victims of the fires. This was held in Nashville on December 9. In addition, Parton hosted her own telethon for the victims on December 13 and reportedly raised around $9 million. Recently, Dolly also donated $1 million to Vanderbilt’s Children’s hospital.

Everywhere she goes, and in almost every way, this human being uplifts humanity and brings music, humor, and good cheer to a fractured world.

They don’t make many people like Dolly Parton. I’m just glad they made one. And they broke the mold after she was born.

A great, great human being. And an unselfish life well lived.

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