On June 7, 1982, The Statler Brothers walked out to host the annual Music City News Awards, and for one more night their original tenor, Lew DeWitt, was standing right there with them. He had spent the previous five months off the road fighting Crohn’s disease. As it turned out, it was the last time Lew would ever appear with the group he helped start.
Less than three weeks later, the Statlers announced that Lew was retiring. It was the first change to their lineup in eighteen years.
Friends Long Before They Were Stars
Lew DeWitt was born in Roanoke County, Virginia, in 1938. When he was still in grade school, his family moved to Staunton, and that is where he made friends with Phil Balsley, Harold Reid and Joe McDorman. In June 1955 the four of them sang “A Little Talk with Jesus” at a local church, called themselves the Four Star Quartet, and started working churches and talent shows around the area. To make ends meet, Lew drove a taxicab.
That first group broke up around 1958, and Lew moved to Baltimore to play guitar in clubs. By 1960 he and Phil were back together with Harold and his younger brother Don Reid. They eventually took the name The Statler Brothers, and in 1965 a song Lew wrote, “Flowers on the Wall,” climbed to No. 2 on the country chart and carried the four of them out of Staunton and onto the national stage.
The Illness He Carried for Years
What most fans never saw was how long Lew had been sick. He had suffered from a painful stomach condition since his teenage years, and in the mid-1960s, while the group was on tour, doctors diagnosed him with regional enteritis, a form of Crohn’s disease. He had surgery, but the pain kept coming back, sometimes badly enough that the group had to cancel or postpone shows.
Because stress could set off his symptoms, the other three took over his share of the business side of the group, so Lew could concentrate on the music.
In 1972, the year Lew turned 34, the Statlers released “The Class of ’57,” a song in which each of the four men took a turn singing about what had become of an old classmate. It won them a Grammy. Lew was singing about other people’s unexpected turns while living with one of his own.
The Months Before the Goodbye
On July 4, 1981, Lew sang with the group at their annual hometown concert in Staunton. It turned out to be his last Fourth of July with them.
That November, after a tour of California, he ended up in the hospital. He told the others he needed a long stretch of rest, and he recommended his own fill-in. His choice was a young singer from Nelson County, Virginia, named Jimmy Fortune. On January 28, 1982, Jimmy sang with the Statlers for the first time, at a show in Savannah, Georgia.
Lew had not given up. In April 1982 he came back to help finish the album The Legend Goes On, and in June he rejoined the group to host the Music City News Awards. But his symptoms returned. Late that month he told his friends he was retiring, and on June 25 the Statlers made it official. Jimmy Fortune, the singer Lew himself had picked, became his permanent replacement. Back home, the change was presented to fans at that summer’s Happy Birthday U.S.A. concert in Staunton.
On His Own
Lew DeWitt did not walk away from music. He moved to the Waynesboro area, put together his own Star City Band, and kept performing on a lighter schedule. He released two solo albums, On My Own in 1985 and Here to Stay in 1986, and from 1984 he made a yearly appearance at Waynesboro’s Summer Extravaganza.
By 1989, his health would not let him go on. He retired from music that year, and on August 15, 1990, he died at his home near Waynesboro of heart and kidney disease, complications of the Crohn’s he had fought most of his life. He was 52.
The Class That Kept Going
The Statlers kept singing with Jimmy Fortune for another two decades. They finished their farewell tour in October 2002 in Salem, Virginia, and went home to Staunton. In 2008, the group, Lew DeWitt included, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Harold Reid, the bass voice who had known Lew since grade school and who co-wrote “The Class of ’57,” died in Staunton on April 24, 2020, at the age of 80.
Two years after Lew’s death, in June 1992, a 1.5-mile stretch of road in Waynesboro was renamed Lew DeWitt Boulevard. The young tenor who once drove a taxicab to get by now has a road that carries his name.