Former President Barack Obama admitted this week that he made a “mistake” by not awarding the presidential medal of freedom to country music legend Dolly Parton during his time in the White House.

Obama fessed up to this when late night host Stephen Colbert asked him how it’s possible that Parton, 74, has never been given this highest honor a civilian can receive.

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“That’s a mistake. I’m shocked,” Obama admitted.

“Looking back at your eight years, do you realize that’s the mistake you made?” Colbert asked.

“Actually, that was a screwup. I’m surprised. I think I assumed that she had already gotten one, and that was incorrect,” Obama continued, adding, “She deserves one.”

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Parton is known to millions of fans for being a country music icon, but behind the scenes, she devotes much of her time to philanthropy. Earlier this year, she made a $1 million dollar donation to COVID-19 research that would go on to help fund the new Moderna coronavirus vaccine, which is likely to be released to the public next year.

“I felt like this was the time for me to open my heart and my hand and try to help,” Parton said of chipping in on the vaccine, according to Fox News.

“I’m just happy that anything I do can helps somebody else,” she continued. “When I donated the money to the COVID[-19] fund I just wanted it to do good and evidently, it is! Let’s just hope we can find a cure real soon.”

Parton is also the creator of the Imagination Library, which provides a free book to a child once a month from the time they are born until they begin school. She once told Southern Living magazine that this charity is “one of the things I’m proudest of, of anything I’ve ever done.”

“You can’t educate enough children,” she continued. “A lot of that came from the fact that a lot of my own relatives didn’t get to go to school because we were mountain people. You have to get out and work and help feed the family. My own dad couldn’t read and write. And my dad was very proud of me. He got to live long enough to see the Imagination Library do well, so he felt like he had done something good too — that he was the inspiration for it.”

The Imagination Library is now available worldwide, and it has donated hundreds of millions of books.

This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.

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