The first place Dolly Parton's love of literacy touched my life was not on a stage or inside a library. It was in the passenger seat of a car. I can still picture those rides with my father. I would read Dolly's books aloud to him as the road stretched ahead of us, and we would listen to her music together along the way. Her stories and songs became part of the rhythm of those trips. They made ordinary miles feel warmer, and they gave us something to share - a story, a laugh, a memory and, sometimes, a lesson that stayed with us long after the car stopped moving.
Those memories also carry my mother's love. She never said no when I wanted to buy a book because she understood its worth. To her, a book was never simply another purchase; it held imagination, knowledge and possibility. Her willingness to make room for every new story taught me that books were not an unnecessary expense, but an investment in the person I was becoming. My father shared the stories with me on the road, my mother made sure I always had one to open, and Dolly helped show me how far a story could travel. There was always something special about the way Dolly communicated. She could speak honestly about hardship without taking away a person's dignity. She could celebrate humble beginnings without treating them as something to escape or hide. Her work carried color, humor and joy, but underneath it all was a deep respect for people who were too often overlooked. She made kindness feel powerful.
I did not understand it fully at the time, but those moments helped shape the way I came to see literacy. Reading was not simply an academic skill or a number on a report. It was connection. It was comfort. It was a way for parents and children to spend time together, for people to understand lives different from their own and for a young person in a small town to imagine a world much larger than the one immediately around them. That understanding eventually helped inspire me to create something that could support others and expand the love of literacy Dolly had helped nurture in me.
In 2017, that dream became the Gustine Traveling Library. What began with the simple belief that books should be available to every child grew into an organization serving families through free literacy materials, educational programs, community projects and a headquarters where children could feel safe, welcomed and encouraged to explore.
That is why the news of Dolly's passing on Aug. 25 felt like more than the loss of a world-famous singer.
The world lost a national treasure, but our little library also lost someone whose example had quietly helped guide its purpose. For our team, her legacy is not distant or abstract. It has an address in Gustine. During both 2025 and 2026, the Gustine Traveling Library received grant support through First 5 Merced County's local work with Dolly Parton's Imagination Library - receiving two separate funding opportunities. The funding helped support the rent at our headquarters and projects that allowed us to continue giving back to the community. At the same time, our headquarters served as a place where local families could learn about and connect with the Imagination Library program.
That support mattered in ways that cannot be captured by a check alone. It helped keep the doors open and the lights on. It helped give our team the stability to distribute free books, provide clothing and food to families, create activities and educational opportunities, and maintain a safe place where children could come to learn, discover and simply be themselves. A grant may look like a line in a budget. In a small nonprofit, it can look like another month of rent paid. It can look like a family walking through the door and finding help without being judged. It can look like a child choosing a book to take home, sitting down in a place built for them and realizing that their community believes they are worth investing in.
Dolly founded the Imagination Library in 1995 in honor of her father, who never learned to read or write. That part of her story has always moved me, especially because some of my own most meaningful memories of Dolly are tied to reading her books to my father. There is something deeply beautiful about that connection: a program born from a daughter's love for her father eventually reached a small library shaped, in part, by a son's memories with his own father. Through the Imagination Library, children from birth to age five can receive a free, age-appropriate book mailed to their home each month. But the program has always represented more than the books themselves. It tells families that reading together matters. It tells children that stories belong to them. It tells communities that even their youngest residents deserve to be surrounded by possibility.
Promoting that program from our headquarters felt natural because its mission reflected what the Gustine Traveling Library had always tried to do: remove barriers, place books into children's hands and make literacy feel joyful rather than intimidating. Dolly's generosity strengthened our ability to do that work while reminding us that meaningful change does not have to begin in a large city or a powerful institution. It can begin with one family, one book or one person deciding to care.
Looking back now, I can see a thread running through all of it - the car rides, the books I read aloud, the music playing beside us, the decision to create the Traveling Library, the children who later walked through our doors and the two grants that helped sustain the place they came to visit.
Dolly was woven into our story long before we realized how closely our paths would connect. Our team plans to celebrate her life and legacy in Gustine at a later date. As part of remembering the love she gave so freely to others, we will also have a special window mural created at our headquarters to celebrate her life and honor her work through the Imagination Library. That tribute will be possible thanks to the heart and talent of our board member Elizabeth Petitt, whose artwork will help our community remember Dolly through the books, color and joy she shared with children everywhere.
There will be time to honor the music, the bright colors, the butterflies, the stories and the millions of books placed into children's hands because Dolly believed they deserved them. Before that celebration, however, we need time to mourn the loss of a truly beautiful soul whose generosity reached far beyond the places she personally visited.
As we remember Dolly, there should also be room for the laughter she gave us. Rewatch "Steel Magnolias" for the umpteenth time and pretend the same scenes will not make you cry. Turn up "9 to 5," or sit quietly with "Light of a Clear Blue Morning." Read a book with your children, give one away, or simply take a walk and think about how lucky we are that such wonderful love can exist.
Dolly Parton may never have walked into the Gustine Traveling Library Headquarters. She may never have seen a child select a free book from our shelves or known exactly what those two grants meant to our small organization. But her love reached us anyway. It arrived through First 5 Merced County, through the Imagination Library and through every family who discovered that a book could be waiting for their child at no cost.
Her love reached us in the rent that was paid, the lights that stayed on, the projects that moved forward and the children who found a safe place to read, learn and dream. It reached me years earlier, in a car beside my father, when her stories and music helped teach me that literacy could bring people together and that generosity could travel farther than we may ever know. Thank you, Dolly, for helping me find part of my purpose.
Thank you for helping our little library continue its work. Thank you for believing that small towns and small children are worthy of big dreams. Her voice may now be silent, but in Gustine, the reading will continue.
