Tom Whitehouse is celebrating 55 years behind the barber’s chair. He first learned to cut hair when he was not quite a teenager.
“My dad cut hair, he wasn’t a paid barber, but he cut hair. He cut us four boys, then he started cutting cousins, and uncles. He got so busy cutting hair, he said: ‘Boy I am going to teach you how.’ He started teaching me how, I wasn’t but about twelve years old then, I started cutting cousins and uncles.”
Whitehouse said his family subsequently moved to Kellyville and an older gentleman who taught music and owned a barbershop traded Young Tom a pair of clippers and a barber chair in exchange for a guitar and amplifier that Tom owned.
“My dad and us moved it up there to my house, I wasn’t but about fourteen or fifteen then and I started cutting people’s hair in Kellyville.
“They would come in here and say, ‘what do I owe you?’ I said I can’t charge, so I said nothing or if you want to give me something, whatever. Some of them gave 50 cents, some would give me a dollar, and some would give nothing.”
When Tom turned 16 he and his dad decided it was time to go to barber school. After graduating from barber college, young Whiehiuse went to work for a barber shop in Tulsa where he only worked for a few weeks because the pay was so low it barely paid for his gas back and forth from Kellyville. Tom then worked for a brief period at a barber shop in Bixby, but again his meager salary was scarcely enough to pay for his fuel expense so he went to work at John Zink. In the meantime, he heard that Herb Carner, who had a barbershop next to the Courthouse Grill on East Dewey Avenue, needed a barber.
“Herb down there, his barber that he had in there, which was Fred Whitehead, went to work for the fire department. I didn’t know this but somebody said he was needing a barber. So, I went and talked to him, he said he would hire me, that was in May of 1968.
Shortly after going to work for Herb, Tom became a married man.
“We got married one week after I went to work for Herbert. We just had our 55th wedding anniversary. I married the sweetheart of my dreams 55 years ago.”
Because Whitehouse was eighteen at the time and his bride was only seventeen, his employer tried to talk him out of the marriage. “Herb tried to talk me out of it, he said ‘That girl is too young.’
Whitehouse worked for Herb for approximately 8 years and then opened his own shop at 2 North Main St., where O.L. Roberton operated a barber shop for several years.
Tom later moved his shop to 6 East Dewey Ave., which had previously housed the Craft Barber Shop.
Whitehouse said he really didn’t like that location due to the lack of parking, so he moved back to his previous location, 2 North Main St, and is still there today.
Whitehouse said the only real changes in the business have been different hairstyles through the years. Unlike many of his contemporaries in the late sixties and early seventies, he embraced the long hair fashion, because all he had to do was simply trim a small amount of hair.
Tom enjoys what he does and gives his customers credit for his longevity as an entrepreneur.
“I will have to say I have some good customers, or patrons, or whatever you want to call them. They’re a good bunch of people. They keep coming, so, I guess I give a half-decent haircut because they keep coming back.”
Besides being a highly skilled barber, Whitehouse is a talented artist, although he describes himself as a “starving artist.” He plays the guitar, having taken a few lessons to learn the “Chet Atkin style of pickin’.” He has several of his paintings on display at the shop along with several guitars and a vintage Fender Amplifier.
Tom Also has the original barber pole that O.L. Robertson had on the outside of the building, mounted in a wall in the shop. He said the reason it is inside and not outside is that when he had a similar pole mounted outside his shop on East Dewey, it was stolen.
When asked if he had any plans to retire soon, he quipped: “I have heard a lot of people say’ when my ship comes in,’ I tell them my ship sank. As long as I’m healthy, I’m going to keep on working. “They will have to scoop me off the floor before I retire, they will say ‘there he lays,’” Whitehouse jokingly said.
