Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal declared September 25 Dolly Parton Appreciation Day earlier this month, and on Friday the city put books into children’s hands to honor the late icon.
Exactly 925 Manhattan children will receive free reading materials for a full year through a donation from Vanderbilt University, matching another 925 kids in Nashville who will get the same gift. The figure deliberately echoes both the date, 9/25, and Parton’s anthem “9 to 5.”
“Dolly Parton was a national treasure. It didn’t matter who you were, a Democrat or a Republican, from a rural state, a red state, an urban area, a blue state, she was one of us. And she represented the best of our nation. So to honor her on this day, is so special,” Hoylman-Sigal said.
“She’s a legend. One of the defining American icons.”
The Nashville native’s reach extended far past country music and into vaccine research, children’s literacy, and now a cross-country book drive bridging her hometown and Manhattan. Parton donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2020 for coronavirus research, funding that helped drive early development of the Moderna vaccine.
Her Imagination Library has long supplied free monthly books to children from birth through age five. The program’s first selection, “The Little Engine That Could,” went home Friday with the Manhattan kindergarteners gathered for the celebration.
City Public Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels read “Coat of Many Colors,” Parton’s own children’s book about growing up poor, to dozens of those students inside the new Hoffman Hall refectory.
Rep. Tony Simone spoke at the event, framing Parton’s legacy around her understanding of literacy’s power.
“As we know, Dolly Parton was an icon, a legend, an artist, a poet,” Simone said. “Dolly Parton had more Grammys, honorary degrees, and business ventures than just about anyone. And somehow still had fewer accomplishments than she had waves. Most importantly, she was someone who understood something simple, but profound, that a book placed in a child hand can change the whole shape of a life.”
The total donation covers 1,850 children across both cities, each receiving 12 books over the coming year.
Parton died August 25 in Nashville at age 80 after a private battle with cancer. The Friday observance fell one month after her death, with officials emphasizing her unifying cultural presence and concrete charitable footprint rather than grief alone.
Hoylman-Sigal had stressed when announcing the day that Parton’s significance transcended geography and genre, a point the book donation literalized by connecting her Tennessee roots to a New York City classroom.
The 1,850 children receiving books represent a fraction of those touched by Parton’s existing programs, but the targeted gesture paired her hometown university with the borough that formally claimed her as “one of us.”
Vanderbilt’s donation arrives as Parton’s Imagination Library continues operating in multiple countries, and as her medical research gift continues yielding public health dividends through the widely used Moderna vaccine.