We all need heroes, people to inspire us, whether we are eight or eighty. Today’s Super Senior might be a good one for any of us. Eugene Ivey, who turns 87 this Friday, still works fulltime as a barber in Fayetteville, cutting hair five days a week, ten hours a day.
“Dad began cutting the hair of his mates in the Navy and decided to go to barber school after he got out,” his daughter Lyn Smith wrote. “He has been working as a barber for 61 years!”
Other WRAL Top Stories
Ivey opened his own shop, “Modern Barber Shop,” in 1961. He cut hair there for 47 years, until it burned October 8, 2008. He was 77 at the time.
Did he retire? No.
The morning it burned down, as the family was picking through the rubble, he received three phone calls before 9 am from area barbers asking him to come and work with them. He moved over to Highland Barbershop, where he still cuts hair Tuesday through Saturday.
In 61 years, working five days a week, at a rate of three hair cuts per hour, it’s estimated that Ivey has cut over 300,000 heads since he first started. He has even cut the hair of four generations in some families.
Ivey has been the recipient of the Fayetteville Reader’s Choice Awards several years.
Asked why he continues, Ivey tells people he loves his customers and it keeps him young.
In addition to work and family, Ivey is also the Captain and longest active member of the Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry in NC. He is also a member of Hillside Baptist Church and a hard-working member of the Jaycees.
Happy Birthday!