How Dolly Parton inspired millions of American soldiers..

Dolly Parton was born into poverty, and even that hardly captures how little her family had. As the fourth of 12 children, she grew up in a one-room cabin without electricity, while money was constantly scarce. Her mother even made clothes for the children from scraps of old fabric. Fame was never part of the plan. But the family had something money could not provide: love, creativity and a deep passion for music.

At just six years old, Dolly wrote her first song about a fallen soldier, with her mother writing down the words as they came from her daughter. It was the beginning of a connection that would eventually reach the hearts of American troops stationed overseas decades later.

In 1991, hundreds of thousands of American troops were stationed in the Saudi desert, waiting for the ground war against Iraq to begin. Amid the heat, sand and uncertainty, one familiar face became a comforting reminder of home. Soldiers pinned photos of Dolly inside their tents, and Vanity Fair called her the sweetheart of Desert Storm. For young Americans thousands of miles from home, she became a small piece of familiarity in the middle of a war zone.

But what many people never saw was how much Dolly gave back to them. She supported military families through free books for children, connected with deployed soldiers through video calls and, when another generation of troops went to Iraq, performed for them from the Grand Ole Opry stage while they watched live from the war zone.

The Air Force found its own way to honor her. During World War II, bomber crews often painted women on their aircraft as symbols of luck, but the tradition gradually disappeared after the war. In 2004, a Tennessee refueling wing revived it for Dolly, painting her likeness on the nose of a tanker and naming the aircraft “Miss Dolly.” She visited the base, signed the artwork herself and performed for the airmen beside the plane.

On Tuesday, Dolly Parton passed away at 80. By order of the president, flags across America were lowered to half-mast in her honor, the same gesture the country uses to mourn its fallen.

At six, she sang about a fallen soldier. At 80, America sent her off like one.