The hugging hairdresser retires

Jo hugs all her customers.

She hugged me when I got done interviewing her Friday afternoon at Shades Hair and Nails in Jasper.

She was a bit apprehensive about the interview. She was retiring after 51 years as a hairdresser.

“There are others here (at the salon where she works) that have done this for a long time, too.” she said.

Her niece Haley Ondiek had reached out about her aunt’s upcoming occasion. Haley also has the distinction of being one of only two people Jo has nipped with the scissors.

“It was when she was little,” Jo explained.

Haley, ever busy and chatty in the chair, had gotten quiet that day.

Jo asked her what was wrong.

“You cut my ear,” Jo feigns tears as she mimics Haley’s response.

Did you feel bad after you nipped her, I asked.

“Mmm, a little,” Jo responds. “She didn’t sit still.”

Two nips in 51 years, not a bad record that began with a girlfriend simply telling her to come along to beauty school in Evansville when Jo was 17 years old.

She attended the Devries School of Beauty (Jo accents beeauooty with a roll of her eyes).

She and her girlfriends lived in Evansville while attending Devries, and though she had never cut hair before, she enjoyed what she was learning. Except she kept cutting herself with the straight razor used for many of the older hairstyles.

“I wanted to cut with sheers,” she said.

It didn’t help that she is left-handed, and they were teaching right-handed.

Her first foray as a professional hairdresser was in Chandler.

“One of the girls I went to school with, her dad owned a salon in Chandler,” Jo explained.

She wanted to start in a town where no one knew her and would feel obliged to have her cut their hair.

She did well and built up a clientele. Then, a lady invited her to a new salon in Jasper. “She saw some haircuts I had done and wanted me to come up to work at Tiffany’s,” Jo said.

She did that for about a year before a change in ownership at Tiffany’s had her applying for a position at Klein’s Salon in Evansville.

She thought she would have to cut some hair as a test before being hired there. However, when she showed up with a friend whose hair she had just cut, the owner of Klein’s hired her on the spot. “I thought that was pretty cool,” Jo said.

She worked in Evansville until marrying Earl Hulsman, her high school sweetheart. They had been broken up for a few years but had gotten back together. When they decided to marry, he wanted her to return to Jasper and “Love took over,” Jo said.

She cut Earl’s hair and admits he was one of her most difficult customers. “He was the worst,” she laughed. “I told him all the time that he was one of my worst customers.”

He was another one that had a hard time sitting still. It was especially hard to trim his beard around his upper lip.

He passed away in 2017 when the lift he was in while working on the lights at the Jasper Football field fell over.

To cope with the loss, Jo went back to work. “One of my good friends who lost her husband told me to go back to work right away,” she said. “She said it would help me, and it did.”

Her work has always been rewarding. She loves helping people feel better and having all the different personalities in her life. She really enjoys it when her customers try out a new hairstyle and it turns out well. “That’s what I love.”

But it is also about being part of the people she sees every few weeks. “They tell you all the things happening in their lives, private things,” she said. “(We) cry together, laugh together.”

“We have a lot of laughs,” she emphasizes.

Friday was her last haircut. If you ask her what she will do now, she’ll tell you she’s going to sit on her a$$.

“I’m tired,” Jo explains. “My feet hurt, my shoulders hurt.”

But she is going to miss her customers.

“I’ll miss them dearly,” Jo said. “I would see them (customers) every three to four weeks or five weeks or whatever their schedule is, but now I don’t know if I’ll see them again. Though this isn’t a huge town, you just don’t run into everybody all the time. That’s the sad part.”

She estimates that nearly 200 people regularly come to her for haircuts right now. Each one is spending about half an hour with her–it takes as long as it takes, and Jo admits she’s not fast. She listening to them discuss the happenings in their lives, laughing, reminiscing and loving them in her own way before seeing them off with a hug.

Maybe if you see her in town, be sure to give her a hug.