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Country music superstar and Tennessee native Dolly Parton is donating $1 million to Hurricane Helene relief efforts, with her Dollywood Foundation and other businesses matching the amount.
Parton and her companies Dollywood Parks & Resorts, The Dollywood Foundation, Dolly Parton’s Stampede and Pirates Voyage are partnering with Walmart in the disaster relief efforts. She announced the donations at a press conference at a Walmart in Newport, Tennessee, today.
Walmart US president and CEO John Furner announced at the conference that Walmart, Sam’s Club and the Walmart Foundation will donate $10 million to hurricane relief throughout the Appalachian region hit by the catastrophic Category 4 hurricane.
The donations from Parton and Walmart will be made to Mountain Ways Foundation, a registered charitable organization dedicated to providing immediate relief to the region. At least 200 people have been killed by the storm and flooding, and the destruction of homes, infrastructure and other properties has been widespread and mammoth.
“I am totally with you because I am part of you,” Parton said at the news conference (watch it below). She added, “I have a lot of my own relatives that live here, and when we heard about this it was devastating, not just because it was my family, because all these people feel like my people. We all feel related, and we are in some sort of way. So it just devastated me just to know that we had to suffer like that.”
Parton said her family members were spared the harshest impact from the hurricane.
“You’re never prepared, you just try to step up,” Parton said today. “God has been good to me, and so has the public, and I feel like if there’s anything I can do to give back in any way I can I’m always willing to do that.”
