Kyle DeGood, ‘20 Management, knows first-hand the enormous impact Dolly Parton had on the world. While at CNU, DeGood started the DeGood Foundation as a way to give back. The foundation’s mission is to provide books to local children and increase literacy and love of learning in the community. The foundation partners with Parton’s Imagination Library to make that happen. In this essay, DeGood reflects on the many ways Parton inspired him to become an agent of change.
For as long as I can remember, Dolly has been a cornerstone of my life. Growing up in a military family, moving as often as we did, she was one of the few consistent things I could look to for joy, inspiration, or even comfort.
She taught me it's OK to be a dreamer, as long as you're willing to work hard to make those dreams come true. That you can achieve great things and still be true to yourself. That you can be kind, genuine, and full of love in a world full of crazy, and still be unapologetically yourself.
As a lifelong fan, I never imagined in a million years I'd actually get to work alongside her in some way. But that's exactly what happened, and it started almost by accident, in a dorm room at Christopher Newport.
I would often visit my little sisters and read with them before bed, and they kept asking me to bring them more books. Somewhere in the middle of those stories, though, I started thinking about how wonderful it would be if other children loved books and reading as much as they did.
On my drive home, the theme song Dolly wrote for her Imagination Library program came on my playlist, and that’s where it clicked. We didn’t have a local chapter at the time. The program mails free, high-quality books to children from birth to age five, no matter their family’s income. She created the Imagination Library as a tribute to her father, who couldn't read or write, starting small in her own hometown of Sevier County, Tennessee.
As a result, I founded the DeGood Foundation in the summer of 2017, between my freshman and sophomore years for the sole purpose of bringing the program to my hometown. In fact, much of the initial groundwork in building the Foundation, including signing the agreements with Dolly’s Foundation, happened in Warwick River Hall.
It made for a surreal experience for the rest of my time at CNU, especially at Luter, where I got to apply what I was learning in real time for the purpose of giving kids free books. Faculty, staff, and friends across the University lovingly embraced my dream and celebrated it every step of the way.
Nine years later, we’ve since mailed a quarter million books to nearly 15,000 children across our Peninsula communities, at no cost to their families, inspiring a love of reading that lasts a lifetime.
I'm heartbroken along with the rest of the world and still processing it all. It has been the honor and thrill of a lifetime to work alongside my idol and be a small, local part of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. It'll be a little harder to tumble outta bed and stumble to the kitchen for a bit, but we'll do it. We'll pour ourselves a cup of ambition and rise to the occasion, for Dolly.