Dolly Parton's father grew up poor and never got the chance to learn to read.
Inspired by her upbringing, the 78-year-old country music legend has made it her mission over the past three decades to improve literacy through her Imagination Library book giveaway program. It has expanded statewide in places like Missouri and Kentucky, two of 21 states where all children under the age of 5 can enroll to have books mailed to their homes monthly.
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To celebrate, she made stops Tuesday in both states to promote the program and tell the story of her father, Robert Lee Parton, who died in 2000.
“In the mountains, a lot of people never had a chance 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 keep the rest of the family going.”
Parton, the fourth of 12 children from a poor Appalachian family, said her father was “one of the smartest people I’ve ever known,” but he was embarrassed that he couldn't read.
And so she decided to help other kids, initially rolling out the program in a single county in her home state of Tennessee in 1995. It spread quickly from there, and today over 3 million books are sent out each month. Since the program started, books have been sent to more than 240 million to kids in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia.
Missouri covers the full cost of the program, which totaled $11 million in the latest fiscal year. Most of the other states chip in money through a cost-sharing model.
“The kids started calling me the ‘book lady,’” Parton said. “And Daddy was more proud of that than he was that I was a star. But Daddy got to feeling like he had really done something great as well.”
In Kentucky, the Imagination Library reaches children in all 120 counties, Gov. Andy Beshear said at an event Tuesday with Parton. More than 120,000 Kentucky children — nearly half of all preschoolers in the state — are currently enrolled to receive books through the program, first lady Britainy Beshear said.
It encourages families to read together, and it allows children to have their own personal library before starting kindergarten, at no cost to their families, the first lady said.
“It’s really a great way to teach children when they’re very young to learn to love books and to learn to read,” Parton said during the event in Lexington, Kentucky.
Parton, who earned the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award a decade ago, said she eventually wants to see the program in every state. While there is a presence in all of them, 21 have legislation ensuring all kids under 5 can enroll. She said she is proud that her dad lived long enough to see the program get off the ground.
“That was kind of my way to honor my dad, 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 to bring honor to their name and to them.”
Parton is an author herself whose titles include the 1996 children's book “Coat of Many Colors,” which is part of the book giveaway program.
As she prepared to sing her famous song by the same name, she explained that it is about a coat her mother made her from a patchwork of mismatched fabric, since the family was too poor to afford a large piece of a single fabric. Parton was proud of it because her mother likened it the multicolored coat that is told about in the Bible — a fantastic gift from Jacob to his son Joseph.
Classmates, however, laughed at her. For years, she said the experience was a “deep, deep hurt.”
She said that with writing and performing the song, “the hurt just left me.” She received letters over the years from people saying it did the same thing for them.
“The fact,” she explained, “that that little song has just meant so much not only to me, but to so many other people for so many different reasons, makes it my favorite song.”
Asked in Kentucky about her lasting legacy, Parton said she'd like to be remembered as “a good ole girl” who worked hard and tried to make people happy and the world a better place.
“Of course I want to be known as a songwriter and a singer, but I honestly can say that the Imagination Library has meant as much, if not more, to me than nearly anything that I’ve ever done," she said.
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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Schreiner reported from Frankfort, Kentucky.