In 1988 Dolly Parton pulled every 7th and 8th grader in Sevier County into a room and told them to pick a buddy. She made them sign a contract.. if BOTH graduate, she hands you both $500. One fails, nobody gets paid. The county dropout rate went from 35% to 6%. She handed out the checks herself. In 1989 she offered $500 to every kid in the county who wanted to go to the local college. When Gatlinburg burned in 2016, she sent 900 families $1,000 a month for six months. You've probably heard that part. Here's the part you haven't: The fund raised more than expected, so she showed up in May and handed every one of those families another $5,000 on top. Then she quietly put $3 million into the recovery group that handles the years after the news trucks leave. She built her county an entire hospital. She played a benefit concert in 2007, Dollywood and the Stampede matched it, and LeConte Medical Center opened in 2010 with a birthing unit and a women's center in it. In 2022 she started covering 100% of tuition, books, and fees for Dollywood employees. Full-time, part-time, AND seasonal. In 1991 she paid for a bald eagle sanctuary because the birds couldn't be released back into the wild, no press release. And when Hurricane Helene came through here in Western North Carolina, she wrote a personal check for $1 million and her companies matched it. She didn't owe North Carolina anything, but she helped us anyway. She started the Imagination Library because her daddy couldn't read or write. Before he passed, he told her it was the most important thing she ever did. Rest in Peace, Dolly 🇺🇸

🚨WOW!!! A mother suffered a medical emergency going 60mph, totally unresponsive, with her little boy strapped in the backseat... ...a total stranger saw what was happening and used HIS OWN CAR to pin her SUV against the barrier and bring it to a stop, SAVING THEIR LIVES!!! His name is Paul Jackson. On Tuesday, Paul was driving down I-5 near Fife when he saw a white SUV cut across THREE lanes of traffic and start bouncing off the concrete divider... Over and over. He pulled up next to it and looked inside. The driver was out cold, eyes rolled back in her head, completely unresponsive at highway speeds. In the backseat he saw a TERRIFIED little boy strapped into his car seat. "Somebody had to do something." So Paul did what almost nobody would do: he used his own car to gently pin her SUV against the barrier and slowly squeezed it to a stop. He slowly and carefully... glided her car to safety. Then he jumped out, threw the car in park, got the little boy to safety, and stayed with the mother until EMTs arrived. Paul was on his way to pick up his wife's BIRTHDAY CAKE when all this happened. He sent her pictures from the scene as proof he wasn't making up an excuse for being late. 😂 "Had to have proof for my wife." When asked why he did it, Paul didn't hesitate: "God put me there to do that, I knew I was going to stop this vehicle no matter what." THIS IS THE AMERICA I KNOW!!! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸