Remembering Dolly: What We Leave Behind
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
10:30 AM -12:30 PM
Ages 7-12
Drop-off gathering
FREE (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)
Over the past few days, something has been hard to miss: people are grieving Dolly Parton.
Flowers, tributes, stories, songs, and memories are appearing everywhere. People who never met her are crying. Parents are talking about her. Musicians, communities and people around the world are trying to put into words why losing one person can feel like something much bigger.
That left us with a question we thought was worth putting on the table with kids:
Why can someone we never personally knew mean so much to us?
This free gathering is an opportunity to explore that question together. We’ll begin with Dolly herself. We’ll listen to some of her music, look through moments from her life and talk about what the kids already know, have seen or may have heard adults discussing. Dolly became one of the most recognizable entertainers in the world, but the enormous response to her death is about much more than famous songs and rhinestones. She became deeply loved for the way she treated people, the humor and warmth she carried through public life, her connection to Tennessee and the many ways she used her success to create something for others. Tributes since her death have reflected just how unusually broad that connection was.
We’ll look at some of what she chose to build with the life she created. Her Imagination Library began here in Tennessee in 1995, inspired in part by her father’s inability to read and write, and grew from giving books to children in Sevier County into an international program that has now sent hundreds of millions of books to kids. We’ll also talk, in an age-appropriate way, about the many other ways she stepped in when people needed help, including disaster relief and support for children and families.
But this won’t be a biography lesson. We’re interested in the bigger questions her life brings up.
What makes somebody important to people they never met? What happens when talent becomes influence? What can someone choose to do with success? Why do kindness and generosity leave such a strong impression? And what does a person actually leave behind when their life is over?
Kids will have space to talk, ask questions, disagree, wonder and make their own connections. No one has to feel sad about Dolly or even know much about her beforehand. We’re simply using a moment that is happening around us right now as an opportunity to look more closely at why it matters.
Then we’ll turn the conversation toward them. We’ll imagine what it might look like to someday have the ability, money, talent, platform or opportunity to make something better for somebody else. If you could create something that helped people, animals, your neighborhood or the world, what would you build? Who would it be for? What would you want your own success to make possible?
And we’ll finish by making something together in Dolly’s honor: a large collaborative Kinder Villa banner built around the words connected to her work with children: DREAM MORE, LEARN MORE, CARE MORE, AND BE MORE.
Each child will contribute to the banner, and it will remain at Kinder Villa as something created collectively in this moment.
This gathering is completely free.
We’re not interested in turning Dolly’s passing into something to sell. We simply felt that when children are living through a moment that adults around them are visibly responding to, there can be value in giving them somewhere thoughtful to bring their questions too.
Sometimes Culture & Society begins with a history book. Sometimes it begins with something happening right now. This time, it begins with Dolly.
Registration REQUIRED.
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
10:30 AM -12:30 PM
Ages 7-12
Drop-off gathering
FREE (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)
Over the past few days, something has been hard to miss: people are grieving Dolly Parton.
Flowers, tributes, stories, songs, and memories are appearing everywhere. People who never met her are crying. Parents are talking about her. Musicians, communities and people around the world are trying to put into words why losing one person can feel like something much bigger.
That left us with a question we thought was worth putting on the table with kids:
Why can someone we never personally knew mean so much to us?
This free gathering is an opportunity to explore that question together. We’ll begin with Dolly herself. We’ll listen to some of her music, look through moments from her life and talk about what the kids already know, have seen or may have heard adults discussing. Dolly became one of the most recognizable entertainers in the world, but the enormous response to her death is about much more than famous songs and rhinestones. She became deeply loved for the way she treated people, the humor and warmth she carried through public life, her connection to Tennessee and the many ways she used her success to create something for others. Tributes since her death have reflected just how unusually broad that connection was.
We’ll look at some of what she chose to build with the life she created. Her Imagination Library began here in Tennessee in 1995, inspired in part by her father’s inability to read and write, and grew from giving books to children in Sevier County into an international program that has now sent hundreds of millions of books to kids. We’ll also talk, in an age-appropriate way, about the many other ways she stepped in when people needed help, including disaster relief and support for children and families.
But this won’t be a biography lesson. We’re interested in the bigger questions her life brings up.
What makes somebody important to people they never met? What happens when talent becomes influence? What can someone choose to do with success? Why do kindness and generosity leave such a strong impression? And what does a person actually leave behind when their life is over?
Kids will have space to talk, ask questions, disagree, wonder and make their own connections. No one has to feel sad about Dolly or even know much about her beforehand. We’re simply using a moment that is happening around us right now as an opportunity to look more closely at why it matters.
Then we’ll turn the conversation toward them. We’ll imagine what it might look like to someday have the ability, money, talent, platform or opportunity to make something better for somebody else. If you could create something that helped people, animals, your neighborhood or the world, what would you build? Who would it be for? What would you want your own success to make possible?
And we’ll finish by making something together in Dolly’s honor: a large collaborative Kinder Villa banner built around the words connected to her work with children: DREAM MORE, LEARN MORE, CARE MORE, AND BE MORE.
Each child will contribute to the banner, and it will remain at Kinder Villa as something created collectively in this moment.
This gathering is completely free.
We’re not interested in turning Dolly’s passing into something to sell. We simply felt that when children are living through a moment that adults around them are visibly responding to, there can be value in giving them somewhere thoughtful to bring their questions too.
Sometimes Culture & Society begins with a history book. Sometimes it begins with something happening right now. This time, it begins with Dolly.
Registration REQUIRED.