DREAM BIG, PRAY BIG!

Dolly Parton is a national treasure. But her origins couldn’t be more humble

- DOLLY PARTON

HOW DID SOMEONE LIKE ME, born in a cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, end up where I have in life? The answer is both complicated and simple. I like the simple part. I dreamed big and I prayed big. Then I worked like the dickens at the opportunities the Lord put before me.

We didn’t have much back then in that one-room cabin with the dirt floor, even less than that most times. Daddy was a sharecropper and later a farmer, a man who worked in the fields until his hands bled to provide for us, his 12 children. He couldn’t read, but he was still one of the smartest men I ever knew.

I was the fourth child in the lineup (you could say almost all of us were middle children!), and when I was trying to make my grand entrance, Mama was having a lot of trouble with the process. Back then in the hills with us rural folk, you didn’t go to the hospital. You had your baby at home. But with me they needed a doctor quick. Daddy got on a horse and galloped into town, where there was an old church and a Methodist minister who happened to be a doctor. Dr. Robert F. Thomas rode back with Daddy and got to Mama just in time. There’s a good chance I might not be here without him. I’m pretty sure I came out crying big. I bet I could have hit high C even then! Which brings me to my first dream.

I WANT TO SING