Dolly Parton Lights the Way

I just passed through Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The damage from last year's fires is still highly evident in that town and the surrounding country, and will be for some time. By coincidence one of my cousins is a civil engineer up that way, and he has his hands absolutely full trying to rebuild the hundreds and hundreds of structures that were destroyed -- indeed, I think he said it was a few thousand structures he had on his plate. There is a real shortage of engineers who are experienced working on mountainsides, and thus there isn't the flood of help from outside the Tennessee mountains that one would expect.

So it is with pleasure that I read about native daughter Dolly Parton's extraordinary generosity in helping her fellow folks. Having grown up in tremendous poverty, and then attained substantial wealth, she never forgets how hard life can be in those mountains.