Dolly Parton grew up in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee as one of twelve children. Her father, Robert Lee Parton, was a hardworking farmer and construction worker who had received very little formal education and was unable to read or write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That experience remained with Dolly long after she left Tennessee and went on to become one of the most successful entertainers in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1988, she established the Dollywood Foundation in her home county of Sevier County, initially with a focus on encouraging local children to remain in school. But a few years later, Dolly began thinking about how she could make a difference much earlier in a child’s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1995, she launched the Imagination Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The concept was simple: children in Sevier County would receive one free, age-appropriate book in the mail every month from birth until their fifth birthday, regardless of their family’s income. Dolly explained that the program was inspired by her father and the challenges he experienced throughout his life because he could not read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What started as a small local effort soon grew far beyond Tennessee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2000, the program began expanding outside Sevier County. Canada joined in 2006, followed by the United Kingdom in 2007, Australia in 2013 and the Republic of Ireland in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her father lived long enough to see the Imagination Library get started, but he did not live to see how far it would eventually reach. Lee Parton died in 2000 at the age of 79. Dolly later said that her father was incredibly proud of the program and viewed it as one of the most meaningful accomplishments of her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By 2003, the Imagination Library had mailed its one millionth book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fifteen years later, Dolly personally donated the program’s 100 millionth book to the Library of Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Imagination Library continued to grow through partnerships with local organizations and governments, eventually sending millions of books to children every month. A child enrolled from birth through age five could receive a personal collection of about 60 books before even starting kindergarten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Dolly, however, the numbers were never the most important thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The program was born from watching an intelligent and hardworking father spend his entire life without the ability to read. Dolly understood how deeply that limitation could affect a person’s opportunities, confidence and future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her father could never read the books that would eventually carry his daughter’s name into millions of homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But his story became the reason those books were sent in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What began in one Tennessee county as a tribute to Dolly Parton’s father eventually grew into one of the world’s largest early childhood literacy programs, giving millions of children something Lee Parton never had growing up: books of their own and the opportunity to discover the world through reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dolly Parton grew up in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee as one of twelve children. Her father, Robert Lee Parton, was a hardworking farmer and […]<\/a> CONTINUE READING >>><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3556,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paxtonhegmann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paxtonhegmann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paxtonhegmann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paxtonhegmann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paxtonhegmann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paxtonhegmann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3557,"href":"https:\/\/paxtonhegmann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555\/revisions\/3557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paxtonhegmann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paxtonhegmann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paxtonhegmann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paxtonhegmann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}