Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 27, 1993 TAG: 9305270114
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELIZABETH KASTOR THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
After years as the official White House barber, of clipping the hair of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon before them, electoral reality intervened once again. There was a Democrat in the White House.
Pitts wrote to White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty, offering his services, but when he got no reply, he quietly packed up his equipment in the tiny barbershop near the Oval Office and took it all back to his baby-blue salon at the Sheraton Carlton.
Over at the White House they may be wishing they'd stuck with Milt Pitts.
"I am not disappointed the president didn't use my services," Pitts said.
The same thing happened during the Carter administration. Another stylist was brought in, someone who had been promised something during the campaign, Pitts says. Pitts understood then, too.
When Pitts, 69, talks about his years of presidential cutting, he speaks of "serving the presidents," giving the phrase the weight and solemnity a Cabinet member might. But there were burdens, of course.
"For 20 years in the White House, I couldn't go anywhere unless I was back in two weeks, because the presidents I served always had their hair done every two weeks. And that's the appropriate thing - once you've achieved high office like that, you don't want to change your image. You don't want to come on TV and have people say, `Oh, he changed his haircut.' "
What you don't want, he suggests, is to have your haircut all over the front page.
And about the cost . . .
"There's no excuse for a person today paying $200 for a haircut. That's showmanship. Anyone who can't do a good haircut for $25 today, they shouldn't be in business."
That's what Pitts charged Nixon, and Reagan, even when he took off that high pompadour he brought from California.
by CNB