Greensburg barber Ed DeBone hangs up clippers after 47 years

After 47 years of cutting the hair of county commissioners, judges, attorneys, priests, mayors, and just plain folks, Ed DeBone has hung up his clippers and razors at his downtown Greensburg barber shop.

“It was time,” said DeBone, who closed his 2nd Street Cuts barber shop in Greensburg on Saturday afternoon. “My body was telling me it was time — my feet, my back, my legs, my hands.”

At age 67, DeBone is looking forward to retirement, to relaxing for the first couple of months after leaving the career behind.

“I will be able to wake up and not have to be somewhere on time,” DeBone said.

DeBone said he will miss his customers, like Greensburg Mayor Rob Bell, who was at the shop Saturday afternoon.

“I’ve going here since I was 12,” Bell said. “It’s like an institution is retiring. People used to hang out here, play cards. It was a cool place.”

Ken Shimko of Unity, said Saturday he will have to find another barber after going to DeBone for 15 years.

“You’re part of everybody’s life,” Shimko told DeBone.

Many of his customers have asked him to continue to cut their hair “on the side,” which he has not committed to doing, DeBone said. He has kept mum on a recommendation for his replacement.

DeBone is respected and skilled enough to have cut the hair of judges — like Richard E. McCormick Jr., Jay Ober and Charles Loughran — and Westmoreland County Commissioner Charles Anderson, District Attorney John Peck, former Greensburg mayors Karl Eisaman and Dan Fajt, and priests and bishops.

Customers say goodbye

Longtime customers came into the shop this past week came to get their hair cut one last time and offer DeBone heartfelt goodbyes.

“I’ve been going here since I had a full head of hair. I got my money’s worth (back then),” said Nick Lapushansky of Greensburg, a customer for more than 30 years.

John Uccellini of Indiana, who has driven the 37 miles to Greensburg to get his haircut from DeBone, said he likes the banter at the barber shop.

“You don’t even have to go to confession,” Uccellini said.

Uccellini said he has been going to DeBone for years since his wife, Holly, had been getting her hair cut by DeBone. She met DeBone while working at Our Lady of Grace Church in Hempfield. Holly broke down in tears when she said her goodbyes to him .

“I’ve been sharing my wife with Eddie for years,” Uccellini joked.

Barbering: A natural fit

The career was a natural fit for DeBone, who grew up in Greensburg’s Hilltop neighborhood and liked to style hair as a youngster. He went to Pittsburgh Barber School at the suggestion of a relative.

He began in the business in 1972, at a time when most men went to barber shops and women went to beauty shops.

The culture of the two was as different as the genders. The talcum powder, hair tonic, after-shave lotion and straight razors sharpened on a leather strop were barber shop staples.

After working at another Greensburg barber shop, he went to work with Andy Makar when a “chair” in the shop was open, DeBone said.

The shop, in the basement of what is now Joseph Thomas Flower Shop, had been operating since 1961, DeBone said. He worked with Makar, who cut hair at the shop for 50 years, until Makar retired.

The shop — complete with the old brown Naugahyde chairs, five sinks and cabinets for clippers and razors — will remain without a barber because DeBone wasn’t able to find anyone to buy his business.

Yet, statistics from the Census Bureau’s American FactFinder shows that the number of barber shops whose only employee is the owner/operator in Pennsylvania has grown for much of this century, from about 3,100 in 2004 to nearly 3,700 in 2016. The number of barber shops with at least one other employee has remained steady for much of the decade, dropping from 238 in 2010 to 235 in 2016.

Jamie Henderson, a barber at Comrades Barbershop on South Main Street in Greensburg, sees the business from a different perspective. As a man in his 50s, he has seen the transition from an old-style barber shop.

Comrades, owned by Greg Henderson, doesn’t see itself as competing with “mom-and-pop” barber shops that still can be found along the main streets in small towns, Jamie Henderson said.

“We target the chains (barber shops),” Jamie Henderson said.

With several of the barbers in his shop not yet the age of 25, Henderson said he considers the profession “a young man’s game.”

“It’s a great time to be a barber,” Henderson said.