Investigation opened after guest dies at West Virginia ski resort

IN NOVEMBER 1981, A 43-YEAR-OLD MAN WALKED INTO A SKI RESORT LOUNGE IN VIRGINIA AND WENT LOOKING FOR THE PERSON WHO WOULD REPLACE HIM. His name was Lew DeWitt. He was the tenor of The Statler Brothers — the voice on "Flowers on the Wall," the song he wrote in 1965 that had made four boys from Staunton, Virginia famous. He had been singing beside the same three men — Phil Balsley, Harold Reid, Don Reid — since he was seventeen years old. Crohn's disease had been eating him alive since he was a te