Watch: Dolly Parton announces $2 million for Helene victims
Country legend Dolly Parton announced a $2 million donation to Hurricane Helene victims in Appalachia Friday, telling a crowd of fans in a Walmart parking lot that "we’re all here to mend those broken hearts."
"Who knew, in our little part of the country here, where I was born and raised just right down the road, that we would have this kind of devastation," Parton said at a press conference in Newport, Tennessee. "I look around and I think, these are my mountains. These are my valleys. These are my rivers flowing like a stream. These are my people."
Parton grew up in nearby Sevierville, Tennessee, home of her Dollywood theme park.
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Parton said she’s personally donating $1 million to the Mountain Ways Foundation, a nonprofit working to help Helene victims recover from devastating flood damage in eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina and the greater Appalachia region.
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Her other businesses, including Dollywood Parks & Resorts, Dolly Parton’s Stampede and Pirates Voyage Dinner & Show, are also donating $1 million, bringing the total donation to $2 million.
Parton also took the time to sing for the crowd, adapting her hit song "Jolene" to "Helene" and changing the lyrics to, "You came in here and broke us all apart."
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The death toll soared to 215 people on Thursday as more victims were found, making Helene the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. Roughly half the victims were in North Carolina, while dozens more were killed in South Carolina and Georgia. How many people are missing or unaccounted for isn’t clear.
Helene death toll surpasses 220; 33 in Georgia
Nearly a week after Hurricane Helene devastated Georgia and other parts of the South, recovery efforts continue as the state works to restore power and provide aid to affected communities. FOX 5 Atlanta's Brooke Zauner joined LiveNOW from FOX with the latest.
"It’s personal because 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," Parton said. "We all feel related, and we are in some sort of way … you don’t want to see anybody suffering. I was heartbroken like everybody else, just amazed and devastated."
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Now a week since the storm first roared onto Florida’s Gulf Coast, the search has continued for people who have yet to be heard from in places where phone service and electricity were knocked out. Pleas for help are coming from people running low on medicine or in need of fuel for their generators.
"We are with you, we love you, we hope that things get better real soon," Parton assured the crowd.