On the Fourth of July in 1994, about 100,000 people poured into Staunton, Virginia, a Shenandoah Valley town of fewer than 25,000. They came for the 25th and final Happy Birthday U.S.A., the free hometown show the Statler Brothers had hosted every summer since 1970. Fans drove in from Milwaukee, Tennessee and North Carolina to be there for the last one.
The size of that crowd only makes sense once you know the choice behind it. By then the Statlers had three Grammys, nine CMA Vocal Group of the Year awards and the top-rated show on The Nashville Network. They could have lived anywhere. They stayed home.
The Group That Would Not Move to Nashville
Most country singers moved to Nashville long before they had a hit. The Statlers did it the other way around. They recorded in Nashville and did business there, but Staunton stayed their base, and that is where they lived. In 1980 they bought Beverley Manor, the old elementary school the Reid brothers had attended as boys, and turned it into their headquarters, with offices, a small museum, an auditorium and a garage for the tour buses.
Harold Reid, the group’s bass singer and its quickest wit, once joked to a California newspaper that they had been too naive or too stubborn to trade their roots for Music Row. Then he gave the real reason.
“We just didn’t want to leave home.”
Family and friends were there, he explained, and living in Staunton kept them close. Back home, nobody treated them like stars. The chairman of the July Fourth committee put it simply in 1994.
“They’re just plain old people who know how to sing.”
How an Empty Park Became Happy Birthday U.S.A.
The celebration started with something the Statlers noticed on Independence Day 1969. Riding through Gypsy Hill Park, they found almost nothing going on, just a few picnics. The city’s only official observance that year was a request for residents to ring bells at 2 p.m.
So in 1970 they threw their own party. The first Happy Birthday U.S.A. drew a crowd of a few thousand. Churches, civic clubs, Boy Scout troops and the local VFW set up booths, and everything was free. The Statlers rode in the morning parade, sang in the evening, stood with their hands over their hearts while Taps played, and then the fireworks went up.
Nearly every year they brought a big-name friend along. Carl Perkins and Mac Wiseman came in 1971. In 1973 Johnny Cash, who had hired the Statlers as his opening act nine years earlier, came to Staunton to share their stage. Tammy Wynette, Barbara Mandrell, Reba McEntire and Conway Twitty followed in later years. By 1993 the crowd had grown to about 80,000.
Why They Decided to Stop
In May 1990, the Statlers announced that 1994 would be their last year as hosts. Don Reid said a quarter century was the right place to stop, and gave a reason that sounded like him.
“It’s a long time and it can’t go on for 100.”
There was also the money. The group never took a profit from the day. Concession and T-shirt money went to charities and civic groups, and Ray Houser, one of the original organizers, told a reporter in 1994 that the Statlers lost money on the celebration every year. Twenty-five years, he said, was long enough.
The Last Fourth
The finale was expected to be the biggest one yet, and it was. Most hotel rooms were booked from Harrisonburg to Lexington, each about 30 miles away. This time the Statlers would be the only act on the bill.
Fans began lining up days ahead. One 51-year-old woman had driven 900 miles from Milwaukee for the sixth straight year and waited five days to claim a front-row lawn-chair spot, close enough to wink at Don Reid. Police let the line into the ballpark around midnight Sunday. Within an hour it was two-thirds full of empty chairs holding places. By 8:30 Monday morning there was no room left.
Two women who had driven six hours from Tennessee ended up outside the chain-link fence, next to the portable toilets. They did not mind at all.
“If we had to sit in the car, we still would be able to hear them.”
The day looked the way it always had: a 10 a.m. parade, horseshoe pitching, bingo, seven clogging teams and a carnival midway. The Shenandoah Valley Kiwanis Club sold more than 9,000 commemorative T-shirts for charity, each one listing the stars who had played the show over the years.
That night Harold and Don stuck to the cornball routine their fans knew by heart, trading jokes as if it were any other Fourth. Then the four voices came together, and down in the front row, the woman from Milwaukee laughed and clapped along.
Still Home
Staunton kept the Fourth going without them, first as America’s Birthday Celebration and, from 2018, as Happy Birthday America, run by Harold’s son Wil Reid and Don’s son Langdon Reid. The Statlers kept touring until October 26, 2002, when they played their farewell concert in Salem, Virginia, and went home for good.
Jimmy Fortune, who had replaced the ailing Lew DeWitt in 1982, later settled in Nashville and carried on as a solo artist. The Reid brothers and Phil Balsley never did move. Harold Reid died at his home in Staunton on April 24, 2020, at the age of 80. Don Reid and Phil Balsley still live there.