Every other week, I fly into Nashville for doctoral classes at Vanderbilt. Most trips begin the same way: I land at BNA, walk through a terminal filled with music and am reminded that Nashville understands the power of place.
After Dolly Parton’s death, Tennessee has an opportunity to tell visitors something important about the people this state chooses to honor.
Nashville International Airport should become Dolly Parton International Airport
.The case is larger than music. Parton’s songs helped make Tennessee recognizable around the world. But her deepest legacy may be what she did with the success that followed.
She accumulated the kind of fame, wealth and influence few people ever experience. Then she repeatedly turned those resources outward.
Dolly Parton improved educational outcomes
The clearest example isDolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Inspired by her father, who could not read or write, Parton created the program in her home county in East Tennessee. What began with roughly 1,700 books has grown into an international literacy movement that now mails more than 3 million books every month to children around the world.
Tennessee embraced the idea statewide, making books available to young children across all 95 counties.
As an education researcher, I spend much of my time thinking about programs and policies capable of improving young people’s lives. There is something beautifully simple about placing a book in a child’s home every month, addressed specifically to that child, and making reading part of childhood before a student ever enters a classroom.
And the Imagination Library was hardly Parton’s first investment in education.
HerDollywood Foundation began working to improve educational outcomes in Sevier County decades ago. Through its early Buddy Program, Parton offered seventh- and eighth-grade students $500 if they successfully graduated from high school. The foundation reports that the dropout rate among those participating classes fell from 35% to 6%.
Americans can all agree on Dolly
Parton's generosity was never detached from where she came from.
When wildfires devastated her home region in 2016, Parton created the My People Fund to help families who had lost their homes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, shedonated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, supporting early research connected to the Moderna vaccine.
She became one of the most recognizable people on Earth without ever treating Tennessee as a place she had outgrown. Her success expanded her capacity to invest in it.
That may be the most important part of her legacy.
American culture often measures success by what someone accumulates: wealth, status, influence and recognition. Parton offered another definition. Success could also be measured by what those achievements allow someone to give away and by how many people have greater opportunities because you succeeded.
In an increasingly divided country, she accomplished something else increasingly rare: Americans who agreed on very little could still agree on Dolly.
The name of Nashville's airport should reflect what we value
That is why renaming Nashville’s airport would mean more than putting a celebrity’s name on a public building. It would make a statement about what Tennessee admires: talent accompanied by generosity, ambition accompanied by gratitude and success measured partly by what we leave behind for other people.
TheMetropolitan Nashville Airport Authority’s existing naming policy presents procedural hurdles for naming airport property after an individual. Those rules should determine how the conversation proceeds, rather than whether Tennessee has the conversation at all.
Airports are gateways. Their names tell millions of travelers something about the places they serve.
I would be proud, every other week, to hear a flight attendant welcome us to Dolly Parton International Airport.
Tennessee could hardly choose a better name to put above its front door.
Alejandro J. Ramos is an education researcher, founder and executive director of the Ramos Research Institute, and a doctoral student at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why Nashville should rename its airport after Dolly Parton | Opinion
