Dolly Parton’s father grew up in poverty and never had the chance to learn to read.
Inspired by her upbringing, the 78-year-old country music legend has spent the last three decades on a mission to improve literacy through her book distribution program, Imagination Library. And in recent years, it’s expanded statewide to include Missouri and Kentucky, two of 21 states where any child under 5 can sign up to have books sent home monthly.
To mark the occasion, she stopped in both states on Tuesday to promote the program and tell the story of her father, Robert Lee Parton, who died in 2000.
“In the mountains, many people never had the opportunity to go to school because they had to work on the farms,” she said at the Folly Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. “They had to do whatever it took to support the rest of the family.”
Parton, the fourth of 12 children in a poor Appalachian family, said her father was “one of the smartest people I’ve ever known” but was embarrassed that he couldn’t read.
So she decided to help other children, and launched the program in 1995, first in a single county in her home state of Tennessee. From there, it quickly spread, and today over three million books are shipped each month—240 million to children around the world since its launch.
Missouri covers the entire cost of the program, which totaled $11 million in the last fiscal year. Most other states share funding through a cost-sharing model.
“The kids started calling me ‘Book Lady,'” Parton said. “And Dad was more proud of that than of me being a star. But Dad also felt like he had really done something great.”
Parton, who received a Grammy for lifetime achievement 10 years ago, said she wants to see the program in every state eventually. She said she is proud her father lived long enough to see the program launch.
“It was kind of my way of honoring my father, because the Bible says to honor your father and mother,” she said. “And I don’t think that just means ‘just obey.’ I think it means honoring their name and honoring them.”
Parton is an author herself and has published, among other things, the children’s book “Coat of Many Colors” from 1996, which is part of the book giveaway program.
As she prepared to sing her famous song of the same name, she explained that it was about a coat her mother had made for her from a patchwork of dissimilar fabrics because the family was too poor to afford a large piece of one fabric.
Parton was proud of it because her mother compared it to the colorful cloak mentioned in the Bible – an amazing gift from Jacob to his son Joseph.
However, her classmates laughed at her. For years she said that this experience “hurt her deeply.”
She said that the pain of writing and performing the song “just fell away from me.” Over the years, she has received letters from people saying it did the same thing to them.
“The fact,” she explained, “that this little song has meant so much not only to me but to so many other people for so many different reasons, makes it my favorite song.”
