Dear Dolly,

We know you belonged to Tennessee first. But here in Alabama, we felt you belonged to us, too.

Your beginnings were humble, a two-room log cabin, raised among a big family with a whole lotta love and not a lot of money. I imagine you sang often, your larger-than-life voice echoing through the floorboards and the walls, a foreshadowing of the journey you’d step into.

You once said you felt like a star when you’d stand on your front porch, put the tobacco stick down in one of the cracks, and sing your little heart out. That’s who you were from the early days. You knew who you were before the rest of the world figured it out.

You were certainly destined for greatness, and I’m certain no one could’ve told you otherwise. There were doubters, of course. The ones who thought your hair and your makeup were too much, who couldn’t fit you into the box they wanted you in. Maybe you already knew you’d broken that mold the moment you stepped into it. You spent years being underestimated, but your resilience never failed you. You turned every doubt into a flame, and every year of being overlooked into a full-on fire.

Across generations and demographics, you brought the world together in ways that few others have.

You gave one of the best gifts imaginable to the children of our state: the gift of education. The gift of literacy. You once said, “If I’m remembered 100 years from now, I hope it’s not for looks but for books.” Here in Alabama, that’s exactly the legacy you’re leaving. Since the state brought your Imagination Library into the homes of little ones, more than 100,000 children have enrolled. You believed every child deserved that chance, regardless of what their family could afford. Long after this letter is read, those books will keep arriving in Alabama mailboxes, in your name, for children not even born yet.

You sang with Johnny Cash, my cousin. He gave you your start at the Grand Ole Opry, introducing a wide-eyed thirteen-year-old to a stage that would become the foundation of everything you built after. But what tied the two of you together was never just that one introduction. It was what you both believed in, and what you both were willing to sing about. You and Johnny never shied away from the hard truths. He sang for the prisoners, the forgotten, the people the rest of the world had already written off. You sang for the poor, the overlooked, the women who weren’t supposed to want more than what they’d been given. 

You brought people together with love. You loved everyone—no matter their age, race, religion, or beliefs. In a world that so often pulls people apart, you became one of the rare public figures embraced with genuine affection across nearly every political, cultural, and generational line. Almost no one else in your position could claim that kind of universal goodwill. I thank you for that.

You refused to look down on anyone, even when you yourself were judged or looked down upon. You knew who you were, and you knew what you stood for, and no one was ever going to change that. Thank you for telling us that we’re enough, and that anyone who believes otherwise isn’t worth our time.

Your legacy will live on in every child who opens a book with their name on it and feels, for just a moment, like someone out there believes in them. It will live on in every songwriter who learns that the truest stories are the ones closest to home. It will live on in every person who ever felt too much, too loud, or too different. I know I’m just one voice, one Alabamian among millions. But I think most of us would agree—you taught us that we each matter, and we’re each enough, exactly as we are.

Rest easy, Dolly. Alabama is a better place because of you.