{"id":36,"date":"2026-08-27T07:19:52","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T12:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/an-american-treasure\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T15:15:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T19:15:52","slug":"an-american-treasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/an-american-treasure\/","title":{"rendered":"An American treasure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MIKE BURKE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allegany Communications Sports<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The memory of the little girl who was born in a one-room cabin in the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee, one of 12 children of a sharecropper, is being honored by everyone, and that means everyone \u2013 the President of the United States, three former presidents, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, socialists, celebrities, the British royal family and the Coldstream Guards band at Buckingham Palace, the guy sitting beside you at the bar, children all over the world, everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dolly Parton, who died Tuesday, is an angel, having lived her life as one for the past 80 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She seemed ageless because she was so kind, resourceful and timeless. She was likely the last contemporary cultural figure who will draw such universal affection, even by those of us who have not been particularly drawn to her musical genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there was her resourcefulness and her talent that not only made her a star of country music, but allowed her to perform with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, Joan Jett, Steven Tyler, Richie Sambora and, yes, even Kermit the Frog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Truthfully, she had no musical genre, because no single genre could hold her. She was an artist and a beautiful song writer, beginning with the story of her impoverished childhood in \u201cCoat of Many Colors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was a movie star and a television star, but everyone, from every demographic, related to her and were drawn to her \u2013 old, young, rich, poor, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, straight, gay, trans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The outpouring of grief the past two days has been gratifying in that the kindness and the goodness of a person can still be endearing during a time dominated by such despicable actions and behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2016 interview, Parton talked of her support for the LGBTQ+ community, saying, \u201cI do not believe we should criticize and judge other people. If you\u2019re the fine Christian you think you are, why are you judging people? I just think we should be more loving, more caring. We are who we are. If you\u2019re gay, you\u2019re gay. If you\u2019re straight, you\u2019re straight. You should be allowed to be how you are and who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dolly Parton brought us all together by merely being Dolly Parton, a woman who could bare her soul in her performance and deeds while keeping a sense of humor and a smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe we should have elected her president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While she avoided politics publicly she said she understood them and had opinions and believed what she believed. She said she didn\u2019t feel she should discuss them, for she considered herself an entertainer, and declined Presidential Medals of Freedom from both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll find me and my opinions in a lot of my songs,\u201d she said. \u201cBut most of it is based on love, acceptance and lifting people up. My daddy was a Republican, my mama was a Democrat, and I\u2019m a hypocrite!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hardly. She put her fortune, her fame and her beliefs to action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1986, she opened Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and the theme park became the largest job provider in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two years later she established the Dollywood Foundation to inspire the children in her home county to achieve educational success. Initial efforts focused on decreasing the drop out rate in the county\u2019s high school. In the early 90\u2019s Parton promised every 7th-grade and 8th-grade student she would personally give them $500 if they graduated from high school. This effort, called the Buddy Program, reduced the drop out rate for these two classes from 35% to 6%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She used the $10 million in royalties from Whitney Houston\u2019s hit cover of her \u201cI Will Always Love You,\u201d which she wrote for Porter Wagoner, and on the same day she wrote \u201cJolene\u201d to invest in a Nashville property supporting a Black community. Parton called the property \u201cthe house that Whitney built.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1995, she launched Dolly\u2019s Imagination Library, first in her native Sevier County, and then expanding around the United States as well as in other countries. The program mails a book each month to children from birth to age 5, to encourage literacy and a love of reading, and it has currently distributed over 300 million books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, she donated $1 million to help fund the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, then was one of the first to receive the shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The affection we have seen and felt for Dolly Parton across cultural lines has been profound and inspiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even President Trump treated her death with reverence, which he doesn\u2019t always do, and that he ordered flags to be flown at half-staff for a week to mark her death is a fitting farewell for an artist who united Americans in a way that few have done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did we know Dolly Parton?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No. But she knew us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began. covering sports for the Prince George\u2019s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at mikeburke934@gmail.com<\/a>. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports The memory of the little girl who was born in a one-room cabin in the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee, one of 12 children of a sharecropper, is being honored by everyone, and that means everyone \u2013 the President of\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allegany-communications-sports-w-mike-burke","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}