Dolly Parton Children's Hospital

We work at Children's Hospital.

We have the Dolly Parton Children's Hospital here in Knoxville.

And we also work in schools.

So we have a program called Rough Readers where the dogs go in there for an hour where they can work with a certain teacher and the kids can learn how to read.

It's all happening today, September 25th, and that, of course, is 925 Dolly Parton Day.

Mark Strassman is at the Dolly Parton Children's Hospital in Nashville.

Mark, good morning.

Good morning to you, Nate Love, when you sing.

925 is going to be a big, big moment for lots of places around the country, but no place probably more than here in Knoxville and here at the Dolly Parton Children's Hospital.

Why? Well, let's ask the people who work here.

What is today? It's holiday! Hattie Halter is one memorable kid.

It's all happening today, September 25th, and that, of course, is 925 Dolly Parton Day.

Mark Strassman is at the Dolly Parton Children's Hospital in Knoxville.

Mark, good morning.

Good morning to you, Nate Love, when you sing.

925 is going to be a big, big moment for lots of places around the country, but no place probably more than here in Knoxville and here at the Dolly Parton Children's Hospital.

Why? Well, let's ask the people who work here.

What is today? It's

I'm very happy to welcome an old friend.

In fact, this month, Variety, the children's charity of Detroit, is going to mark 45 years of helping Michigan children in so many ways, but especially what we're talking about here is upper limb differences, access state-of-the-art prosthetic technology through the Variety Myoelectric Center at Corwell Health, East Children's Hospital.

There's a lot going on here.

And Kim and I have been very supportive of of Variety for a very long time.

yeah and and uh just in this this past july um i was working with linda larkin princess jasmine and jonathan freeman um jafar and we were asked to go to what was known as the east tennessee children's hospital um to visit the kids that were there and we got there we had learned that dolly had just um basically paid to have the hospital renamed.

It's now called the Dolly Parton Children's Hospital.

And this is obviously she just passed away last month.

We were there just a month before.

I've always believed that every child deserves a fair chance to grow up healthy, hopeful, and surrounded with love.

Now, that belief is what brought me together with the incredible folks at East Tennessee Children's Hospital.

So that's an announcement from just this past February when she made what the administrators called such generational and transformational donations to East Tennessee Children's Hospital that they later decided to rename it in her honor.

But her history in this regard goes far back and includes raising money for the Red Cross, donating heavily to several hospitals in her own state, backing an HIV/AIDS documentary called Common Threads in the early days of that crisis, and being an advocate for awareness, education, healthcare, and research of how to treat the disease for the decades afterwards.

That's not technically politically neutral, right? She wasn't just aggressively criticizing her community with buzzwords that would have done little but rile them up against her, though.

I had a couple opportunities through WWE to get back in the ring and use that to support various charitable organizations.

The money went to support the families of first responders through the Knoxville Public Safety Fund, Dolly Parton Children's Hospital.

And TCAT.

So it was really cool to go back and, you know, to get back in the ring, have some fun, but also then be able to support some worthy causes.