BATAVIA, Ohio — The Clermont County Board of Developmental Disabilities lowered the American flag outside its Thomas A. Wildey Center to half-staff this week in memory of Dolly Parton, the country music star and philanthropist whose Imagination Library program has mailed free books to Clermont County children for years.
Parton, 80, died Tuesday. The agency, commonly known as Clermont DD, announced the flag lowering in a Facebook post that credited Parton with helping shape childhoods across the county long before her death.
“Dolly has left a hole in the heart of our nation,” the agency said in its post. “She was the epitome of kindness and all things good.”
Clermont DD said it was “honored to be at the table” years ago when local officials worked to bring Parton’s Imagination Library to the county, meeting with a representative from her foundation to iron out how the program would work. The agency said it learned that day that every child from birth to age 5 in the county could enroll at no cost and with no income requirement, and that every child’s first book in the mail is “The Little Engine That Could.”
The Clermont County Public Library administers the program locally, mailing an age-appropriate book to each enrolled child every month until the child turns 5. As of March 2025, the program had mailed 337,047 books to Clermont County children, according to the United Way of Greater Cincinnati, which tracks the program’s local impact.
Parton launched the Imagination Library in 1995 through her Dollywood Foundation in her native Sevier County, Tennessee, with the goal of instilling a love of reading in young children regardless of their family’s income. The program reached every state by 2004 and later expanded to Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Republic of Ireland, mailing more than 200 million books to children worldwide as of 2023, according to the Imagination Library.
Parton was born in a one-room cabin in Pittman Center, Tennessee, the fourth of 12 children of Robert Lee Parton Sr. and Avie Lee Owens Parton. She began performing as a child, moved to Nashville the day after her 1964 high school graduation and built a nearly six-decade career that produced more than 3,000 songs, including “Jolene,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You.” She later opened the Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, helping turn the Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge-Sevierville area into one of the region’s top tourist destinations.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the Clermont County Board of Developmental Disabilities.