On Saturday, when the Tom Syner Memorial Oak Leaf Festival Parade turns onto Main Street, the grand marshal will introduce a Hank Williams tribute band and then, if the day goes as planned, pick up a microphone and sing a song with them. Hilary Williams is the daughter of Hank Williams Jr. and the granddaughter of Hank Williams Sr., the country singer who died in Oak Hill on New Year's Day in 1953. Festival director Saundie Smith put it simply: it will be an honor for the family to take part.
That detail is not a footnote to this year's Oak Leaf Festival. It is close to the whole story of why this particular week feels different from the twenty-six that came before it.
Oak Hill has run this festival every Labor Day week since the late 1990s, and most years it looks like most years: a parade, some music, a pumpkin weigh-in, fireworks. This year the parade is also closing a loop that has been open for seventy-three years, and it is closing at the same moment a second piece of Oak Hill history reopened its doors after sitting quiet for longer than most residents can remember. Neither event alone would be worth much ink. Together they say something true about the town right now: the things that made Oak Hill feel like Oak Hill did not disappear, they were just waiting.
The Festival Week, Night by Night
The 27th annual Oak Leaf Festival started Monday, August 31, and runs through Sunday, September 6, with most of it happening at the Lively Amphitheater and along Main Street. If you have not been tracking it day by day, here is where the week stands:
- Monday, Aug. 31: Dance to the Oldies with Lee Dean opened the week at the amphitheater.
- Tuesday, Sept. 1: Kids' Night at The Frozen Barn, an early evening built for families with young kids.
- Wednesday, Sept. 2: The Untrained Professionals play the Lively Amphitheater tonight.
- Thursday, Sept. 3: Karaoke and a gospel sing round out the quieter middle of the week.
- Friday, Sept. 4: The pace picks up with a Jeep and off-road vehicle show on Main Street, a Hot Wheels track, and a Parade of Lights, with Alabama tribute act Alabama Sunset playing that evening.
- Saturday, Sept. 5: The Tom Syner Memorial Oak Leaf Festival Parade, a pumpkin weigh-in, a cake walk, the Oak Hill's Got Talent competition, and a burnout event.
- Sunday, Sept. 6: A car show and closing events, with fireworks at dusk to send the week off.
If you only make one stop, Saturday is the one built around the story that matters most this year.
A Parade Route That Runs Through 1953
Hank Williams Sr. did not live in Oak Hill. He died here, on his way to a New Year's Eve concert in Canton, Ohio, a stop on a tour that never made it there. That fact has been part of the town's local memory for over seventy years, the kind of detail longtime residents mention almost in passing, the way you'd note that a building used to be a bank.
What makes this year different is that the connection is not being mentioned in passing. It is standing on a float. Hilary Williams, granddaughter of the man who died here, is this year's grand marshal, and the plan for Saturday has her introducing a Hank Williams tribute band before the parade and possibly joining them for a song. Smith described it as something the family is looking forward to, a way of honoring a legacy that runs directly through this town whether Oak Hill talks about it every year or not.
For a festival that has run the same basic format for over two and a half decades, this is the kind of detail that turns a routine parade into an event with a memory attached to it, the sort of thing that gets repeated at dinner tables for years after the floats have gone home.
The Building at the End of the Parade Route Used to Be Locked
Here is the second piece of this week's story, and it does not involve a parade at all.
For most of Oak Hill's recent history, the old White Oak Country Club sat mostly closed, a fixture from the 1920s known for its nine-hole golf course but not much else in the way of public life. This summer it reopened as the New River Tavern and Bistro, a full-service restaurant and event space inside the same clubhouse.
Owner Alan Greenstein originally planned something aimed squarely at tourists passing through on their way to the New River Gorge. Then renovations started, and longtime residents began showing up on their own, telling him what the club used to mean to them, sharing memories of a building most of them had not set foot in for years. The restaurant that opened is shaped by those conversations as much as by any business plan. It is open Tuesday through Saturday at 1206 Summerlee Road, and a Sunday brunch started in mid-July. During the two weeks of soft opening before the official ribbon cutting, the restaurant was already serving around 200 diners a night, a number that suggests the building's absence had been felt more than anyone was saying out loud.
Put those two stories side by side and the pattern is hard to miss. A parade brings back a piece of the town's musical history that had been dormant for decades. A dining room brings back a building that had been dormant for years. Neither of these things happened because Oak Hill decided to market its history. They happened because people who already live here kept showing up, telling stories, asking questions, until something that had been closed opened back up.
What Was Already Here the Whole Time
None of this changes the fact that most weeks in Oak Hill do not come with a parade or a ribbon cutting, and that is worth saying plainly. The town's daily rhythm runs through smaller, steadier places that were never closed to begin with.
Cafe One Ten on Main Street has been serving its fried green tomato BLT and smoked gouda mac and cheese to the same mix of locals and hikers coming off the New River Gorge trails for years, and the slice of peanut butter pie at the end of the meal is as much a fixture as anything on this week's festival schedule. A few miles of quiet exercise are available on the White Oak Rail Trail, which runs nearly 8 miles connecting the old communities of Summerlee and Carlisle, most of it paved and easy walking. Along the way it passes the White Oak Railroad Depot, built in 1903 and still standing at the intersection of Virginia Avenue and Central Avenue, and Collins Park, where the trail runs past a disc golf course that gets steady use on weekday evenings.
These are the places that do not need a festival week to matter. They are simply what Oak Hill does on a Tuesday. But it is worth noticing that even the town's newest headline, the New River Tavern reopening, follows the same logic as the rail trail and the diner: something built decades ago, allowed to age quietly, now getting used again by the people who live around it.
That is the thing about a town this size. History here does not sit behind glass. It shows up in a parade, or reopens its kitchen, or waits along a paved trail for someone to walk it after dinner.
If you already call Oak Hill home, none of this is a reason to do anything differently this week except maybe get to Main Street a little early on Saturday and save a seat for the parade. And if you are the kind of person who reads a piece like this and starts wondering what it would actually take to plant roots in a town where old buildings keep finding their way back to life, Mendy Harvey has spent a career getting to know Oak Hill and the towns around it well enough to answer that question honestly. Reach out when you are ready, and bring your questions about the neighborhood along with you.
