Nashville has been known internationally for decades as “Music City,” particularly because of its role in the development and commercial success of country music.
The city is home to recording studios, music publishers, performance venues and institutions that have shaped generations of performers.
Parton’s own career is deeply tied to that world.
Born in rural Tennessee, she eventually became one of country music’s most famous performers and songwriters. Nashville provided the professional environment in which her recording career developed, and the city remains closely associated with her public legacy.
Ireland, meanwhile, has long had its own enthusiastic audience for American country music.
The relationship is not difficult to understand. Irish traditional music and American country share historical and musical connections involving storytelling, acoustic instruments, family, hardship, migration, love and rural life.
Over the decades, American country performers have attracted devoted audiences in Ireland, while Irish artists have developed their own distinctive country-music scene.
Parton became one of the American performers who successfully crossed that cultural distance.
Aer Lingus noted that she visited and performed in Ireland multiple times and that her music has remained popular among Irish listeners across generations.
The EI95 designation therefore does more than reference an American celebrity.
It symbolizes a longstanding cultural connection between two places separated by the Atlantic but connected through music.
The Tribute Goes Beyond Music
Aer Lingus could have stopped with the flight number.
Instead, the airline decided that the inaugural EI95 service would also recognize another important part of Parton’s legacy — her work promoting childhood literacy.
Every child traveling on the first EI95 flight from Dublin to Nashville is expected to receive a book.
The gesture is inspired by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, the book-gifting program established by Parton in 1995.
The program sends carefully selected books to young children at no cost to their families.
According to the organization, participating children can receive one book every month from birth until age five, depending on availability through local program partners.
The concept is deliberately simple.
A child receives a book addressed directly to them.
Then another arrives the following month.
And another after that.
Over several years, those deliveries can gradually become a home library.
A child enrolled from birth can accumulate as many as 60 books by the time they reach age five.
For families that might otherwise struggle to regularly purchase new books, that collection can be significant.
But Parton has repeatedly explained that the program began for an intensely personal reason.
Her father could not read or write.
The Father Who Inspired the Imagination Library
Parton has said that her father’s inability to read and write became one of the major inspirations behind the creation of the Imagination Library.
Although she became famous through music, she eventually chose literacy as one of the central causes of her philanthropic work.
The program began in 1995 in Sevier County, Tennessee, where Parton grew up.
Initially, it served children in her home community.
The idea proved popular enough that it gradually expanded.
By 2000, efforts were underway to replicate the program nationally. By 2003, the organization had mailed its first one million books. Tennessee later pursued statewide coverage, and international expansion followed.
Canada joined the program in 2006.
The United Kingdom followed in 2007.