What did we ever do to deserve Dolly Parton?
Vanderbilt University Medical Center just announced that the queen of country music (she wouldn’t say that, but I’m saying that) is donating $1 million to their ongoing pediatric infectious disease research.
The hospital has a research program which aims to understand how viruses and bacteria cause disease, understanding and preventing resistance to antibiotics, preventing and treating infections, diagnosing and treating infections in children with cancer and research to define the impact of childhood infections throughout the world.
Of course, Dolly has long been an advocate for children, as she also has her own foundation, Imagination Library, which aids in helping young children both learn how to read, and fall in love with reading, in order to educate them for a lifetime.
The ever-humble Dolly says she’s just doing her part to help keep as many children as health and safe as possible:
“I love all children.
No child should ever have to suffer, and I’m willing to do my part to try and keep as many of them as I can as healthy and safe as possible.”
And of course, this isn’t the first large charitable donation the Tennessee native has made to, as she donated $1 million gift to VUMC in April 2020 to help with COVID vaccine research. She later received a dose of her own medicine, so to speak.
Mark Denison, MD, professor of Pediatrics and director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt, says this very generous donation with only accelerate their research in finding cures for countless pediatric infectious diseases:
“We are deeply honored by Dolly’s contribution to our research mission.
For over 40 years our division has been a national and international leader in studies for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of life-threatening infections, and this gift will accelerate our work and support new ideas.”
Though Dolly and her husband of 56 years, Carl Dean, were never able to have children of their own, Dolly has talked about this previously in other interviews, saying ultimately, she believed God didn’t mean for her to have her own kids. She wanted everybody’s to be hers, so she could be a fairy godmother to all of us…
Where do I sign up for that?
And speaking of kids, how dang cute is this video of Dolly singing her song “Brave Little Soldier” to a class of little ones in 2017?
A national TREASURE:
