Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
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| Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 13 | Issue 778 |
| Craig Impelman Speaking | Championship Coaches | Champion's Leadership Library Login | |
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DOLLY PARTON: KINDNESS AND LOVE (PART ONE)
Dolly Parton grew up with eleven brothers and sisters in a two-room cabin in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, without electricity or running water. She became a country music legend, selling more than 100 million albums worldwide.
When Dolly was a little girl, her mother stitched together scraps of fabric to make her a coat. As she sewed, she told Dolly the Bible story of Joseph and his coat of many colors. Dolly went to school proud of her coat, believing she looked like Joseph.
The other children laughed at her patchwork coat. She came home crying.
Dolly remembered her mother’s answer: "I don’t want to ever hear you say that we’re poor. We are rich in kindness and love and understanding."
Dolly built the rest of her life on that kindness, love, and understanding.
"You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving." —John Wooden
1986 Bringing Opportunities HomeBy 1986, Dolly had become a recording star and movie actress. Now she wanted to bring opportunities home—to create jobs for family, friends, and neighbors in the mountains where she had grown up.
Her idea was a park celebrating the place and people she loved. In a 1982 interview with Barbara Walters, she described "Dollywood USA," a mountain version of Disneyland. She partnered with the Herschend family, owners of Silver Dollar City in Pigeon Forge, and invested several million dollars to expand and rebrand the existing attraction as Dollywood.
"When I first had the big idea to start Dollywood, my accountants and lawyers all thought I was making a big mistake," she recalled. She went ahead anyway, replacing advisers who opposed the venture with people willing to help her carry it out.
Dollywood opened on May 3, 1986. Visitors could hear mountain music, watch Appalachian craftspeople at work, and ride a steam train through the foothills. That first season brought 1.3 million visits, approximately 75 percent more than Silver Dollar City’s final season.
The park grew into a destination with roller coasters, theaters, a water park, and resort hotels. By 2023, Dollywood and its water park together attracted approximately 3.5 million visits annually, with about 4,000 employees during peak season. A Tennessee transportation study estimated Dollywood’s annual economic impact at $1.8 billion, crediting it with supporting more than 23,000 jobs throughout the region.
1988 The Dollywood Foundation and the Buddy ProgramAs Dollywood prospered, Dolly found another way to put her success to work for others. In 1988, she established the Dollywood Foundation to help children in her home county succeed in school.
"Be more concerned with what you can do for others than what others can do for you. You’ll be surprised at the results." —John Wooden
One early effort began with a straightforward promise. Dolly invited seventh- and eighth graders to choose a buddy and help each other stay in school. If both graduated from high school, she would give each student $500. Students signed contracts committing themselves to the agreement. The foundation reported that the dropout rate among the participating classes fell from 35 percent to 6 percent.
For Brenda Price, a student at Seymour Middle School, that promise became a first step toward college. After graduating in 1992, she used her $500 toward her first semester at Walters State Community College. She became the first person in her family to attend college, earned a University of Tennessee degree, and spent twenty-two years teaching at Seymour Intermediate School.
1995 to 2026 The Imagination LibraryIn 1995, Dolly turned her attention to children who had not yet entered a classroom. Her inspiration was her father, Robert Lee Parton. He was intelligent and hardworking, but he had never learned to read or write. Dolly had seen the embarrassment and limitations that brought him. She wanted children growing up behind him to have opportunities he had missed.
She established Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, offering children in Sevier County a free, age-appropriate book every month from birth until their fifth birthday, regardless of family income. The book arrived addressed to the child. It belonged to them—to open, hold, reread, and keep. A child enrolled from birth could begin kindergarten with a personal library of sixty books.
The American program’s welcome book was The Little Engine That Could. Its message of determination reflected what Dolly wanted children to discover: possibilities beyond the circumstances into which they were born.
Her father lived to see children calling her the "Book Lady." Dolly recalled that he considered the Imagination Library the most important thing she had ever done.
Beginning in 2000, other communities adopted the program. Local organizations recruited families and raised money, while Dolly’s foundation coordinated book selection, purchasing, and distribution. Funding was shared with community partners; the growing library became a continuing partnership rather than a gift Dolly financed alone.
Tennessee pursued statewide coverage in 2004. Canada joined in 2006, the United Kingdom in 2007, Australia in 2013, and the Republic of Ireland in 2019. Audio and Braille editions were added in 2011. The program celebrated its 100-millionth book in 2018, its 150-millionth in 2020, and its 200-millionth in 2023.
By June 2026, the Imagination Library and its partners had delivered more than 325 million books across five countries and were sending more than 3.5 million books every month. What began with a daughter’s love for her father had become a monthly delivery of possibility to millions of children.
"True happiness, freedom, and peace cannot be attained without giving them to someone else." —John Wooden
Dolly had already changed thousands of lives. She was just getting started. More next week in Dolly Parton: Kindness and Love (Part Two).
Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman
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"My creed is this: Robert Ingersoll (1833–1899) "The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to sally deliberately forth and try to lift with one’s sympathy the gloom of somebody else." Arnold Bennett (1867–1931)
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