by Ace Collins
For three and a half decades, from debut to departure, Don Reid was a member of one of the most recognized vocal groups in the history of music. The Statler Brothers were originals, unlike anything that had come before or has come since. Much more than just singers, they were storytellers who spun their tales in rhyme and harmony. And a majority of their songs that became chart-topping hits looked into the elements of life that everyone else seemed to forget. Don, Harold, Phil, Lew, and later Jimmy wrote like Norman Rockwell painted; they captured rich snapshots of America’s simplest scenes and preserved them in an unforgettable musical form.
On records and in concerts, the Statler Brothers made people smile, cry, look back at special moments or people, and even caused a few folks to think. With hits like “The Class of ’57,” “Flowers on the Wall,” “Did You Know You Are My Sunshine,” and “More Than a Name on the Wall,” Don and the boys from Staunton, Virginia, would imprint a lasting and emotional impression on the United States. And while they would spend more than thirty years traveling coast to coast and border to border, their home address would always remain their birthplace, and Don and his partners would also hold onto the spiritual roots of their childhood.
“My mother was the backbone of the family,” Don explained as he looked back over a life that began in the Virginia hills in the concluding days of World War II. “There were three of us kids, and I know it sounds trite to say this, but she was a perfect mother. She had a great sense of what was important and always focused on those things.”
Frances Reid was a pleasant woman with a big smile and a hearty hello. At first glance, this joyful mother appeared to have life pretty easy. She always had time to check in on friends, and she would volunteer for community, school, and church projects on a moment’s notice. Yet looks are often deceiving. In fact Frances’s life was anything but easy. She worked five nights a week, from eleven until seven, at a state mental institution. There in a world of misunderstood souls, she labored to bring hope and peace to broken men and women. Her gentle smile and kind words were often the only “Christian” touch many of these patients ever received.
“Besides doing the jobs of a mother and a wife,” Don remembered, “she worked at night, then slept in the daytime. Yet she wouldn’t let us leave the house for school without spending some time with us. And she would always set her alarm so that she was up before we got home.”
For the Reid children this sense of being important to their mother created a deep respect for her. They knew she worked hard, but they never sensed they finished second to her job. Because she made each of them feel of great value, her children embraced the elements of her life that she considered to be most important.
“One of the first things I remember learning was that we always had to be at church. And she didn’t send us; she took us. She didn’t just sit in the pew either. As early as I can remember she was a Sunday school teacher and a leader in vacation Bible school. She was ready to do any job that needed doing. In fact, she was the first woman in our Presbyterian church to be approached to be an elder. Ironically she didn’t believe a woman should fill this role, so she turned it down. But that is just the kind of pillar she was in our church. So I indeed knew that church was very important.”
Yet at the Reid home a Christian life did not begin and end when the church doors opened and closed. In fact, the Lord was just as alive in their tiny home as He was under the big steeple downtown. And Frances made sure the Lord’s lessons were taught day in and day out, through each and every one of life’s experiences.
“She did everything quietly,” Don explained. “She never preached to you, but she taught you the lessons you needed to know by example or suggestion.”
Mother Reid’s Bible was not just read every day; it was studied. Her children watched her as she pulled out pencils and pens, underlined favorite Scriptures, and jotted down notes on the sides of the pages. And she then looked for ways to apply those lessons to her children’s lives.
Don grew up in the segregated South. In the early- and mid-fifties the idea of integration had not yet hit the rural areas. So it was rare to see children from different races associating with one another. The rules of society prevented it.
“I remember one day after vacation Bible school I wanted to play softball. So I rode my bike down to the field. When I got there some black kids were playing on the field. I watched them for a while, then got back on my bike and went home.” When Don arrived at home, he said nothing. He just strolled into the house, tossed his glove in a chair, and sat down.
“I thought you were going to play some softball,” Frances inquired.
“I wanted to,” Don replied, “but the black kids were already there.”
His mother paused for a moment, looking up from her cleaning, then asked a question that was not meant to be answered. “What’s wrong, don’t they play ball too?”
Don didn’t answer, but he thought about what she said. Yes, they were playing ball, he told himself. Looking back at his mother, staring deeply into her eyes, a simple truth suddenly hit him. There was no reason not to join that game.
As the years went by Don realized that his mother was trying to teach him to look beyond color and into a person’s heart. She believed that when he did, he would find a great deal in common with everyone he met.
“She was amazing with how she taught us,” he explained. “She didn’t preach, didn’t scold, she just put everything in its place, and at the same time she put me in my place. That was her charm. Often, just a look down over the top of her glasses was all she needed to teach us what we needed to know.”
On that long-ago summer day Don jumped back on his bike, went back to the ball diamond, and asked the kids on the field if he could play too. Without realizing it, a decade before the local schools opened their doors to African-Americans, the boy took a large step toward integration. That step was taken because his mother felt a need to teach her son an important Christian lesson. That teaching wouldn’t stop at this monumental moment; it would continue day after day, week after week, and year after year.
It might have been her work at the mental institution, a place filled with people of all races and backgrounds, or maybe it was just something she learned through Bible study, but Frances had a real understanding of all people being God’s children. As he grew older Don began to notice this too. He watched his mother as she sincerely tried to live as Christ had. She didn’t judge, she didn’t separate, she didn’t choose who she associated with based on class, race, or distinction, and she wouldn’t allow her children to stoop to doing any of those things either. She opened her heart and home to anyone who needed a hand or a prayer. Therefore her life lessons took hold and rooted deeply in her children’s hearts.
Because church was so important in the Reid household, music was an important facet of spiritual growth. Through youth choirs and community singings, Don and his older brother Harold were exposed to a rich library of gospel music. In high school the brothers joined with friends Lew DeWitt and Philip Balsley to form a local quartet. Singing songs such as “Amazing Grace” and “Just a Little Talk with Jesus,” the Kingsmen, as they called themselves, began to work up an enthusiastic local following. Until they were discovered by Johnny Cash, no one expected the boys ever to do much more than charm regional audiences. Yet when the country music superstar took the boys on the road and they changed their name to the Statler Brothers, the quartet quickly made noise on both the country and rock charts. In just a few years the kids from Staunton grew into one of the most important vocal groups in country music since the Sons of the Pioneers.
The Statler Brothers’ journey to the top was really due to the hand-penned hits that reflected the middle-American values and life lessons taught by Don and Harold’s mother. In no small way, these “Sunday school” lessons also were the reason that each of the four refused to get caught up in the lure of stardom. They stubbornly did not change their personalities, their values, or even their addresses. Nowhere was this adherence to lessons taught by Frances Reid more apparent than in the group’s obvious Christian witness.
One in every ten songs that the Statler Brothers recorded was a hymn or gospel standard. You simply couldn’t purchase a Statler Brothers album without getting a dose of sincere faith at the same time. This recording formula could be traced back to their mother’s practice of tithing not just financially but with her time and talents too.
“When we were growing up we always went to church,” Don recalled. “So even when we were touring, on Sunday morning we would get up and find a church to attend. It didn’t make any difference where we were, we would find a place to join with others and worship. If you weren’t in church on Sunday, it just felt like you were skipping. And Harold and I knew that Mom wouldn’t stand for that.”
In fact, from time to time, even after Don had children of his own, his mother would track him down on Sunday afternoon and make sure he had been to church somewhere that morning. When she was in her eighties, she still checked to make sure her boys were keeping their date with the Lord each Sunday.
Frances was there the first time her boys performed as a quartet, and in 2003 she was there the last time the Statler Brothers took the concert stage. It was a career that began and ended with “Amazing Grace.”
“She was such a strong influence,” Don explained. “I think she deserves the credit for much of the success I have had. When she died I inherited her Bible, the one she wrote her notes in, and I go to it quite often. So she is still teaching me, she is still guiding my way in life.”
In 1979, in the middle of the group’s incredible career, the Statler Brothers hit the top ten with a song called “Nothing As Original As You.” For most who heard this number it was just another clever Statler Brothers standard, but for Don it was probably more. So many times he had looked into his mother’s eyes and realized that God was looking at him through her. The Lord was teaching him through her example. And He was telling him that each of His children are originals, each has gifts, each has talents, and each has the opportunity for grace. Don first found that grace in his mother’s eyes and at his mother’s church. That grace was always there waiting for him when he got home from school as a child. Thanks to his understanding of the Lord’s love as displayed through his mother’s touch, Don Reid came to understand that grace was also wherever he went on the road as a part of the amazing Statler Brothers. That grace had been in his mother’s eyes when he was born, and it remains in his heart today.
From I Saw Him in Your Eyes by Ace Collins
by Erik Rees
