Legendary country music band rocked by 3 deaths, health issues

The Oak Ridge Boys perform the national anthem before the Music City Bowl NCAA college football game between Purdue and Auburn on Friday, Dec. 28, 2018, in Nashville, Tenn.(AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

It is no secret that this has been a rough year for the country music world, but few have been hit as hard as The Oak Ridge Boys.

Two of the band’s members have lost their wives, and another member of the band has had to medically retire.

The most recent loss was suffered by frontman Duane Allen, whose wife Norah Lee Allen, died back on Easter. Duane Allen recently took to Facebook with a long post on The Oak Ridge Boys’ page expressing his feelings after losing his wife.

Allen wrote that he has “been so overwhelmed with all of your love, support, and prayers, since my Norah Lee went to her new home.”

Duane said that he is having a tough time in the big home that Norah filled with so many memories, but that with the help of family he is starting to go through everything she collected over six decades.

“I want to preserve the life of my beautiful wife and her career as well as our family’s history,” he said.

“There are times when I just break down when I find a drawer with enough money that the kids always had money to (buy) lunch at school,” he wrote. “Now the grandkids have found that drawer.”

He went on to further open up about how difficult this has been for him.

“I have had a hard time even finishing sentences without crying since I lost the most beautiful lady I ever met, the love of my life,” he wrote. “I am so thankful to God almighty for letting me share her for 54 years and eight months of the happiest years of my life. She was the love of my life.”

Just hours after Allen announced his wife’s death on Easter, it was revealed that singer Richard Sterban’s wife, Donna, lost her father, too.

“Prayers for her family at this time of loss,” a post to the group’s X, formerly Twitter, page said. “Quite a memorable Easter … the good news is the promise of eternity with Jesus who conquered death that we may live.”

Those two incidents alone would be tough enough, but the band has been hammered by bad news in 2024.

Phyllis Carr, the wife of longtime guitarist Donnie Carr, died in March.

Also, back in January, Bonsall, a tenor with the group, announced that he was retiring from the road due to a debilitating medical condition at 75.