Danielle Parton

They look alike and sound alike, but this Parton says her famous aunt does not like to fly. This Parton, however, loves to fly. 

“Piloting is the only thing I’ve ever truly loved,” she says. “I love everything about an airplane. I like the way they smell, the way they sound. I like the characters involved with them. I love airports, big ones and little ones. I love people watching in an airport.” 

Today, she has type ratings for aircraft including the
Lockheed C–130 and the Airbus A320 family. She started flying in 2003 in Cessna 150s and 170s, but when she asked the best—and least expensive—way to learn to fly, she was told to join the military. She served in the Air National Guard 118th Wing Nashville, 123rd Airlift Wing Kentucky, and 164th Airlift Wing Memphis. She became an aircraft commander in 2012 and was deployed several times. She is the recipient of the Combat Action medal, the Air Medal, and is on the Commodore’s List of Flying Excellence for undergraduate pilot training.

She first realized she wanted to fly when her aunt took the family to Hawaii. 

“Dolly had the bright idea to fly us all to Hawaii. We acted so bad, she never did it again. Can you imagine taking 17 rednecks to Hawaii?” she said. “I’d never been out of Tennessee.” But she said she’d always had a wanderlust. “I’d never saw an airplane that I didn’t wonder where it was going and want to be on it.”

She started out as a flight attendant. “It didn’t take me long to figure out that flight attendants and pilots had the same lifestyle but one had a much better paying job,” she said. “I’d never known a pilot. Certainly not a female pilot. So, I asked and was told ‘go military.’ ‘Go guard.’ And I couldn’t afford to pay for [training] on the civilian side. And I didn’t tell her [Dolly]. I didn’t tell her
what I was doing until after I did it.”

And while her aunt is a strong supporter of everything she does, the younger woman has never capitalized on her aunt’s fame. “Some people get confused because they hear me on the PA, and they feel like Dolly’s flying them because we’re the only ones that have this dialect.”

She did, however, use her family’s “recipes” to start her “side hustle.” Driving to airline sim training, she was struck by a billboard advertising Ole Smoky Moonshine and got to thinking about her family’s moonshine. “Like everybody around here, we all have a legend of moonshine in our family. Ours was a bunch of drunks. And there’s no Dolly Parton’s daddy’s moonshine recipe. He couldn’t read or write. He never wrote anything down. It’s just honey, sugar, corn, whatever they had, that’s what they fermented with.”

She worked for nine years perfecting Shine Girl moonshine and opened her distillery in Sevierville, Tennessee, in 2022. “I wanted to do what my ancestors did but also put my own twist on things.”

That twist is moonshine flavors such as coconut, key lime, lavender, and red velvet. “One of the things that makes moonshine so interesting is it can be so many things,” she said. “A lot of people have this opinion of moonshine that it has to be harsh. My first one was rosé, patterned after rosé wine. It has a floral note to it. My coconut goes great in a margarita mix. Probably the most unique is my red velvet. It is fantastic in coffee and hot chocolate.”

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