(the venture now includes a water park
and three huge dinner theaters), Parton
hoped the business might bring work
to the economically depressed Great
Smoky Mountains region. “I knew Dol-
lywood would be a great business for
me,” she says, “but I also knew it would
generate a lot of money in that area
and provide jobs. That’s true success—
when everybody’s making money.”
Parton formed the Dollywood Foun-
dation in 1988 and gave scholarships to
students in her native Sevier County.
The foundation’s main philanthropy
today is the Imagination Library, which
this year will provide 6 million books to
children in the United States, Canada,
and the United Kingdom. The program
salves the sadness Parton feels about
her late father’s never having learned to
read. “My daddy was more proud of the
kids calling me the book lady than them
calling me a star,” she says.
Keep Your Foot on the Gas
There are a few things that Dolly Parton
doesn’t do. Work out, for one. “I doubt
I’ll ever be burning up the woods with
old exercise,” she says, “but my brain
sweats. My mind goes all the time.”
She also doesn’t sleep a lot, and she
gets antsy just kicking back. “The last
break I took was the longest two weeks
I’ve ever spent,” she says. “I was like,
‘Enough already.’” Parton says she will
never retire: “I’ll always want to have
something to do, and hopefully I can
just fall dead right in the middle of it.”
More and more of the projects she
dreams up involve kids. She plans to
put out a series of children’s CDs and
perhaps host a children’s TV show
along the lines of Paul Reubens’s campy
Pee-wee’s Playhouse.
“In my older years I’m going to go
into that world of children,” Parton
says. “That’s the way to keep yourself
young. Be childlike, not childish.”
The way Parton sees it, it’s simple:
“You can do anything you want to do
as long as you keep a good attitude and
keep working at it,” she says. “But the
second you give up, you’re screwed.” ;
West Coast editor Meg Grant profiled Dustin
Hoffman in the March–April 2009 issue.
