At this time of the year, the Quote of the Month moves from a business focus to one of charity and recognizing our good fortune. Welcome!
Dolly Parton, one of 12 children, was born in a two-room log cabin that had no electricity or running water. Her parents, an illiterate dad and homemaker mom were so “dirt-poor” (her words) that her father paid the attending physician who birthed Dolly with a bag of cornmeal. All the kids would sleep three or four to a bed – often for warmth – because in the colder weather, snow would come through the cracks in the walls. Her “shower?” A cold mountain creek that was used year-round. And most of her clothes were made, by her mum, from burlap feed sacks. Dolly started teaching herself to play a homemade guitar at the age of 7 and made her first public performance at age 10. Of course, the rest is history.
Estimates suggest Dolly has given away over $500M to charitable causes. She has funded scholarships, hospitals, cancer research, disaster relief, vaccine development and, with her dad in mind, literacy. To the latter point, in 1995, she started the Imagination library, a program that sends books, every month, to deserving children. To date, Dolly has donated more than 200 million books to children in five countries!
If you were to ask her, Dolly makes it clear she had a dream, as a child, to become a singer and a songwriter. I guess the question now becomes what can we do to help make another child’s dream come true?
As a final thought, consider the words spoken by Reverend Sydney Smith more than two hundred years ago. “It is the gravest of mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.”
Perform better!
