{"id":753411,"date":"2026-08-29T09:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T09:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/753411\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T09:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T09:04:09","slug":"in-walked-this-big-bundle-of-energy-the-day-dolly-parton-came-to-rotherham-dolly-parton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/753411\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018In walked this big bundle of energy\u2019: the day Dolly Parton came to Rotherham | Dolly Parton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shane Jarman was up a ladder decorating a Christmas tree at the school where he was deputy headteacher when he got a call asking him to come to Rotherham<\/a> hospital ASAP. It was December 2007 and Jarman\u2019s wife, Claire, had given birth the previous day to their first child, a girl called Emma, so of course he rushed to the phone. All was well, he was told, but that \u201ceverything would become clear\u201d when he got to the hospital.<\/p>\n

Once there, his wife told him \u2013 somewhat unexpectedly \u2013 that they were going to meet Dolly Parton. \u201cAnd literally within what felt like five minutes,\u201d he recalled, \u201cthere were great camera flashes<\/a>, lots of noise, lots of clicking and in walked this real big bundle of energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shane Jarman and his wife, Claire, watch as Dolly Parton holds newborn Emma. Photograph: The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust<\/p>\n

Jarman said that as his wife handed over their tiny 4lb 6oz baby to the country star, \u201call I remember is seeing Dolly Parton<\/a> with my little girl\u2019s head in her hand and these great big red nails\u201d.<\/p>\n

Was he a little nervous about the nails? \u201cI was very nervous about the nails to be quite honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parton was in the South Yorkshire<\/a> former mining and steelworking town \u2013 not principally known for its razzle-dazzle \u2013 for the British launch of the Imagination Library, the book donation programme the musician had started in her Tennessee home of Sevier County a little over a decade earlier, and which she had been invited to extend to children in Yorkshire.<\/p>\n

Dolly Parton performs at the launch of her children\u2019s literacy scheme in Rotherham. Photograph: Rui Vieira\/PA<\/p>\n

If Rotherham \u2013 or at least a gathering of local dignitaries that assembled later in a disused steelworks \u2013 was a little bemused by the singer, Parton knew places like this, and of course knew how to charm.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gotta make sure I say your town name right \u2013 it\u2019s Rother\u2019m?\u201d she said, flattening the famous southern twang to something approximating flat Yorkshire vowels. \u201cDid I get it right? I\u2019ve been practising because it don\u2019t look like that on paper. In the States, anything that\u2019s h-a-m we have to say Rother-ham.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the torrent of tributes to the entertainer, businesswoman and philanthropist since her death on Monday, Rotherham too has been remembering<\/a> the impact of a woman who, for all her own glamour, cared deeply about places that had a little less of it.<\/p>\n

Parton may have jested when she said she had considered buying a South Yorkshire pied-\u00e0-terre (\u201cso you may be walking down the streets of Rotherham and see me coming out of a little cubbyhole somewhere\u201d), but her description of the post-industrialist town as \u201ca heart spot for me\u201d was sincere, thanks to the similarities she saw to her own outsider upbringing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI totally related to Rotherham,\u201d she said<\/a> some years later. \u201cI know that it\u2019s out in an industrial area \u2026 When they were making fun of me for going out there, I thought, you know what? Don\u2019t make fun of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scheme ensured that every child in Rotherham was posted a free book, in their own name, for each month of their life until they were five, funded partly by Parton\u2019s foundation and partly by the local authority and other local funders. Deborah Bullivant, who took over leading the Rotherham Imagination Library shortly after Parton\u2019s visit as part of a wider literacy drive, said that despite some initial scepticism from locals, it \u201cchanged the culture\u201d for many.<\/p>\n

Dolly Parton meets young children at the Magna Science Adventure Centre in Rotherham in 2007. Photograph: Getty<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people were very suspicious: Why Dolly Parton? What is this thing?\u201d she said. \u201c[But] can you imagine receiving a book, from registering your child\u2019s birth, your baby in their own name receives the book every month through the letterbox? For many families who didn\u2019t really have a background in reading, it changed the culture within their homes to being more of a reading culture and embracing books and using books and sharing books.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that the literacy drive was so personal to the singer was \u201cthe best way to counter any of the suspicion or worries that people had about it\u201d, Bullivant said. \u201cWhy is Dolly Parton doing this? Who is she? She doesn\u2019t know about this? Well, she does. She understood she needed to drive her own work herself from scratch. She got the importance of the imagination, of reading, of telling stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the Rotherham scheme was wound up in 2015 after the council withdrew support<\/a>, it would be rolled out to other places in Britain, including Doncaster, North Lincolnshire, the London borough of Southwork (\u201cHello Suth\u2019rk! <\/a>This is Dolly!\u201d) and Nottingham (which even coaxed an \u201cAy up me duck!\u201d<\/a> from the singer).<\/p>\n

Shane Jarman and his daughter, Emma, now 18, today. Photograph: Family Handout<\/p>\n

In total, 6.3m books have been given to children across the four UK nations since one-day-old Emma Jarman received the first one in 2007, a copy of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which Parton autographed for her. (Globally, the figure is 300m).<\/p>\n

Emma, now 18, will shortly be going to university to study biomedical science, \u201cand, if I know Emma, [the book] will go to university with her so that she can show her friends there,\u201d said her father.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shane Jarman was up a ladder decorating a Christmas tree at the school where he was deputy headteacher…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-753411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}