Dolly Parton Supported America's Military for Over 50 Years

Dolly Parton, the singer-songwriter whose six-decade career made her one of country music’s most recognizable voices, died Aug. 25 in Nashville, Tennessee. She was 80. President Donald J. Trump directed American flags at all public buildings, military installations and U.S. territories to fly at half-staff in her memory through sunset tomorrow.

She never wore the uniform, but for more than 50 years, Parton found ways to reach those who did.

In the early 1960s, a teenage Parton fell for a young Nashville man serving in the Army National Guard. Carl Dean completed his service, and in 1966, the couple wed, beginning a marriage that lasted nearly 60 years.

In the 1970s, a syndicated radio program called “Country Cookin’ with Lee Arnold” carried a single line before every broadcast: “Presented by the United States Army Reserve.” Surviving recordings list Parton among the featured country artists.

In 1991, weeks after soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, returned from Operation Desert Storm, Parton drew cheers and chants after climbing onto the shoulders of an Army major near a pair of M1 tanks. “I’ve got an all-American heart,” she told Vanity Fair, the magazine covering the visit.

On Veterans Day 2003, Parton released “For God and Country,” an album pairing patriotic standards with original songs, among them “Welcome Home,” written for a parent waiting on a son deployed overseas. “We can’t give them enough praise and honor and thanks,” Parton said of veterans, service members and military family members.

The tribute followed quickly. On Sept. 8, 2004, Parton stood on the flight line at McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base in Tennessee, where airmen of the 134th Air Refueling Wing had painted her likeness onto the nose of a KC 135 Stratotanker and named it “Miss Dolly.” She signed the artwork and performed for the airmen and their families.

Then, in April 2005, came the Baghdad broadcast. The Grand Ole Opry partnered that night with the War Department’s “America Supports You” campaign, and Parton hosted, with then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld joining her onstage to thank the performers and country fans supporting U.S. troops. American Forces Television carried the broadcast to 177 stations worldwide, including a live feed reaching Baghdad before sunrise — photographs from that night capturing both ends of it: Parton under the Opry lights, and soldiers in Iraq watching from a screen half a world away.

Offstage, Parton was growing an international literacy effort that would touch millions of lives — including the military families she devoted herself to. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which started as a program that mailed free books to local children in her home county of East Tennessee, was inspired by her father, who never learned to read or write.

In 2024, nearly three decades after its founding, the Imagination Library’s Washington state affiliate partnered with the Government Employees Health Association on a $15,000 grant expanding free books to military families. Half a century after a vinyl record shipped to country radio stations with her name on it, children of service members were still finding Dolly Parton waiting for them — this time in a mailbox instead of on a dial.

In Cumberland County, North Carolina, home to Fort Bragg, every baby born at Womack Army Medical Center receives an Imagination Library book at birth, then a new one every month until age five. In June, two months before Parton’s death, Womack received a regional Beacon Award for the program. “Early literacy begins the moment a child enters the world,” said Army Col. Stephanie Mont, the hospital’s commander, standing beside a cardboard likeness of Parton to accept the award.

A book arriving at a military child’s front door. A television signal reaching Baghdad. A radio program. An Army post. A patriotic album. An airplane bearing her name. Different decades, different settings, the same idea repeated for more than 50 years: Parton had so much to give, and she gave it.

And as flags at installations across the country are lowered in her memory, the military salutes the life of a woman who, in every era and in every way, stood steadfastly by those who serve.