Dolly Parton never answered Marci Curtis' letters, but Curtis still gets fan mail of her own − because of Dolly Parton.
"It's such an incredible legacy she has left behind," said Curtis, 61, with ripples that even someone so creative couldn't have pictured.
Among the splendid things Parton did for the world was create Imagination Library, the program that sends books every month at absolutely no charge to children from birth to age 5.
Curtis, of Troy, wrote two of them.
She doesn't know how the first was chosen, or whether Parton ever paged through it before she died of cancer at age 80 on Tuesday, Aug. 25. But Curtis is certain of this:
The books mattered, and her experience with Imagination Library made her own children wiser people.
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That's what she wanted Parton to know. A singer, actress and philanthropist who Curtis' two daughters never met helped them recognize that on their worst days, they are blessed. Unwittingly, she put them in situations that taught young women old truths.
Every few years, Curtis would drop a note to say, "Hey, you really impacted our lives. We deeply appreciate how much you have done for our community and for us."
Chances are, the messages never burrowed through − but simply sending them was another guidepost for her girls.
Her daddy's reach
Curtis' father was an international banker. As a kid, she lived in Germany, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland.
Parton's father was an illiterate sharecropper in Sevier County, Tennessee. She grew up with 11 siblings in a cabin with no running water.
She revered Robert Lee Parton, who helped inspire Imagination Library. “Daddy was a very smart man,” she said. “And I often wondered what he could have done had he been able to read and write.”
The program began back home in 1995: one book a month for every growing child, building a collection and a valuable habit.
Arm-in-arm with nonprofits, local partners or various chunks of government, it has now spread to all 50 states, the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland, and mailed more than 300 million books.
Two million of them had Curtis' name on the cover.
The birth of the books
A wedding and portrait photographer, Curtis wrote and took the pictures for "Big Sister, Little Sister" because no one else seemed to have thought of it.
Skye Macrae, her eldest, is 32 and a therapist in New York City. Taylor Yau, 30, lives in Troy and sells real estate.
Three decades ago, Curtis and her husband, Rodney, went looking for books to help Skye get enthused about the pending addition to their family.
What they found was a parade of dire warnings. The baby will be noisy and stinky, mom will be busy, everything will change − but don't worry, you'll love her!
“They were freaking her out,” Curtis said, so as soon as she had two adorable little girls at home doing photogenic things, she started snapping pictures and writing encouraging words.
Here's a tip for aspiring authors: Blind luck helps. With no agent and no real clue what she was doing, Curtis sent query letters to five publishers, and Penguin Putnam wrote back.
We like it, an editor said, but it needs to be multicultural. Curtis was living in Midland, not a font of diversity in 1998, which is how she found herself chasing a woman through a rainstorm one day in a Staples parking lot.
Sure, her target said, I’d love for my biracial Asian kids to be in a book. Other parents signed on as well. By 2000, it was on the shelves in hardcover for $12.99, with a print run of 12,000 copies.
Then Parton's people found it, or the publisher found the program, or perhaps elves were involved. However it happened, in 2009, "Big Sisters" became a paperback and an Imagination Library staple.
Curtis had already written a follow-up, "Big Brothers, Little Brothers." Someone had the truly brilliant idea to combine the two in a flip book with a front cover at each end, and the money came trickling in.
Pennies for her thoughts
Curtis remembers a check every six months, or maybe it was quarterly.
One payment, back when stamps were much cheaper than today, was worth less than the cost of the postage. A few others hit four figures.
Come 2016, alas, after Penguin and Random House merged, Curtis' books fell off the list. The program had more titles to choose from, and countless households already owned her work.
Before that, though, at the reduced rates paid by Parton's nonprofit, Curtis collected 2½ cents per copy as the author and another 2½ as the illustrator. The family designated one-third of the take for the girls' college education, one-third for retirement, and one-third for family enrichment ... and all those nickels amounted to nearly $100,000.
“We don’t buy new cars,” Curtis says. Fiscally, they’re cautious.
Their one extravagance, under the category of family enrichment, was travel.
They took the girls to London, Rome and beyond, “and our kids grew so much on those trips,” she said.
They saw the treasures and absorbed the history, but more than that, they grasped what it was like to be foreign.
“Some people never have that feeling of being the odd man out,” Curtis said. “Of not being able to understand the language or the money.”
They learned to feel empathy and think globally, and that stays with them wherever they go.
Back in Troy, meanwhile, every now and again, Curtis gets a letter or an email from a welcome stranger. Parents have gone online and tracked down the author of a book that meant something special to the children in their laps.
They found it in an attic or at a resale shop, it resonated, “and how do you compare to that?” Curtis asked. “It’s an amazing feeling."
It takes her back to Dolly Parton and everything she did, and it makes her want to sing.
To find out if Imagination Library is available where you live, go to imaginationlibrary.com. Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Troy author never heard from Dolly Parton, but Parton changed her life
