debuting later this year. According to The Palm Beach Post,
she’s worth between $200 million and $400 million, up there
with Madonna. And, most important, she’s happy.
OPENING SPREAD: LORENZO AGIUS/CON TOUR B Y GE T T Y IMAGES. CLOCKWISE, FROM
TOP RIGH T: NANC Y BARR/RE TNA LTD.; MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/CORBIS; MICHAEL
OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; ROGER RESSMEYER/CORBIS
“I’m happy now in a special kind of way,” says Parton.
“I’ve been fortunate to live long enough to see that I have
made it, that people do have some respect for the things I’ve
achieved. Some people say that I’ve been an inspiration.”
There’s a lot we could learn from Dolly Parton. At a time
when many Americans are, if not hardscrabble poor, still
struggling to live for today and plan for tomorrow—and
with a lot less than they had a year ago—her folksy apho-
risms hold especially true.
AIM CRAZY HIGH
Parton first started writing songs when she was just seven,
imagining she would one day be a musician. “I never had any
doubt that I was going to spend my life in music,” she says.
During her teenage years Parton and her mother’s brother,
Bill Owens, also a songwriter, would venture into Nashville
and try to get signed. “We used to come down in his rickety
car any time we could beg, borrow, or steal enough money
for gas,” Parton remembers. “We’d clean up in service sta-
tions. I’d wash my hair in those old, cold sinks and put my
makeup on in the mirrors in the car.” Through it all, she says,
“there wasn’t ever a time I thought I wasn’t going to make it.”
And when she did make it, Parton kept dreaming. “I wake
up with new dreams every day. And the more you do, when
you’re a dreamer, the more everything creates other arenas
you can go into. It’s like a tree with many branches, and
branches with many leaves.”
PRAY, DO
Parton’s dreaming has always been in-
formed by an abiding faith. In a corner
of her sprawling southwestern-style
office complex is a ten-by-ten-foot
chapel with walls of backlit stained
glass. “I have a place of worship in each
of my homes,” says Parton. “Even in my
apartment, I have a little pray-do where
I can kneel. I pray as I walk around,
but it’s a way to remind you that it ain’t
gonna hurt you to get on your knees and
humble yourself before God.”
Over the years Parton has fashioned
her own personal spirituality, but the
roots of her faith go back to her child-
hood. Her maternal grandfather was
a Pentecostal preacher. Her father’s
family was Baptist. “I’m not some crazy
Holy Roller, though I grew up with
that,” she says. “I’ve learned through
the years to communicate with God
as I perceive him. I pray for guidance,
and I accept the things that come as an
answer to prayers.”
“Her faith drives her,” says Danny
Nozell, Parton’s manager. “She thinks
about things, she prays on them, then
she makes a decision. And the decisions
more often than not go her way.”
When they don’t, Parton still keeps
the faith. “I think, ‘Well, maybe God’s
got something better for me.’”
PEARLS OF DOLLYDOM
“You don’t live this
long and not have
tales to tell.”
“It’s so boring to me
to get on a treadmill
or to get on the floor.
I’d rather pull cotton,
you know, and think.”
“I never feel like I’ve
got too much to do.
I love being creative.
I love to work.”
“I went from no
electricity in my early
days right into this
new high-tech world.
Course I don’t know
my ass from a hole in
the ground about it,
but I surround myself
with people that do.”
“It makes you feel
better about your
own success if you
don’t just hoard all
that money. I al ways
pray to God, ‘ Well, give
me enough to share
and enough to spare.’”
KNOW WHO'S ON YOUR SIDE
Along with hope and faith, Parton
always knew the value of keeping
the company of folks she trusted.
“You’re not going to see your dreams
come true if you don’t put wings, legs and arms, hands
and feet, on ’em,” she says. “You gotta have people to
help carry out those dreams, and, Lord, I’ve been surrounded by great people.” That’s partly because Parton
knows how to avoid negative people, says Ted Miller,
her business manager at the Dollywood Company.
Parton counts her childhood girlfriend Judy Ogle, and her
semireclusive husband of 43 years, Carl Dean, whom she met
outside a Nashville laundromat in (CONTINUED ON PAGE 67)
