Blue Ridge Country January/February 2024 - 63

F
or kindergartener Danielle Parton,
having a famous aunt who
performed on TV was nothing
out of the ordinary-until a classmate
set her straight. " I've always looked a
whole lot like she does at every stage of
our lives, " says Parton. " When we were
kids at the same age, it's almost sometimes
a mirror image. "
So when the little boy
bluntly announced, " She
looks a lot like Dolly except
... " then stared at her chest,
Parton says, " I remember
thinking, 'I'm 5. I'm pretty
sure my Aunt Dolly didn't
have boobs when she was 5.'
That's when I started really
noticing that she was looked
at in a different way. "
Spirited, straight-shooting
and, like her beloved aunt, just
downright fun, 47-year-old
Parton now splits her time between
flying planes for a major
commercial airline, serving
in the Air National Guard
and running her one-woman
entrepreneurial show, Shine
Girl, a small-batch moonshine
company she founded
in her hometown of Sevierville,
Tennessee, in 2022. With
uncommon flavors like rose´,
lavender, coconut and the bestselling red
velvet cake, Parton's high-proof liquor
tastes nothing like the bootlegged potable
her family made decades ago.
" That stuff kind of tasted like I imagine
kerosene to taste, " she says. " I have a
strict policy I don't like to suffer when I
eat, when I drink. "
Filled with wanderlust as a kid, Parton
wondered where every airplane she saw
was headed and dreamed of traveling
there too. After earning a business degree
in 1998 (she was the first female in
the family to finish college), she says, " It
didn't take me long to figure out working
9 to 5 in a regular job was not for me. I
just couldn't stand the monotony of the
same thing every day. "
Thanks to the connections of an
American Airlines driver who often
drove Dolly to the airport in Dallas, Parton
landed a job as a flight attendant.
Early on, one thing was obvious, she
It didn't take me long to figure out working 9 to 5 in
a regular job was not for me. I just couldn't stand
the monotony of the same thing every day.
she quips, " is making a brigade
of Marines vomit in the back of
the airplane. "
Back home in Tennessee in
2014, Parton was driving from
Nashville to Sevierville after her
first training session with a major
commercial airline (she's not
supposed to say which one, she
notes) when she passed a billboard
for a line of moonshine
made by a high school classmate
and thought, " Oh man, that
is such a great idea. Good for
him. "
Then came the light bulb
says. " Pilots and flight attendants had
the exact same lifestyle but somebody
had a much better job, and it was not
me. " When she asked about becoming a
pilot, co-workers advised her to spread
her wings with the Air National Guard.
That suited her just fine, especially
since she'd been based in New York City
during the September 2001 attack on
the Twin Towers.
" The events of 9/11 just had such a
profound effort on me and I wanted to
be part of the history of trying to protect
our nation, " she says.
In the National Guard, Parton
learned to fly C-130s and C-5s and was
deployed twice to Afghanistan, twice to
Kuwait, where she piloted fighter jets
in mountains so tall " there were always
rocks in the sky and you were never out
of danger of hitting something. We did
get shot at. I've hauled Taliban prisoners.
I've hauled special operations. "
But her proudest military moment,
moment: Somebody should
make her family's recipe. That
day, Parton started developing
a trademark-aiming to license
the brand, she had no intention
of running a distillery-but
quickly discovered her ancestors
didn't pass down any tried-andtrue
instructions.
Back in the day, Parton's great-grandfather,
a part-time deputy named Wiley
Noland, sometimes helped shut down the
stills even though he owned one himself.
Her Papaw Lee Parton tended one too,
as a way to supplement his family's income.
But, says Parton, " My guess is they
probably drank more than they sold. "
She remembers tasting the " medicine "
when she was just 5 or 6.
" Different relatives would give us a
spoonful here or there. They would say
that it was because we were sick. I think
they were just trying to knock us out so
we'd shut up and go to sleep. "
LEFT: Danielle Parton says she first " tasted the
medicine " at age 5 or 6.
ABOVE: Parton has deployed to Kuwait and
Afghanistan as a pilot for the Air National Guard.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 63
Blue Ridge Country January/February 2024

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