ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 12, 1996 TAG: 9612130004
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA Z. RAUCH STAFF WRITER
Not even a mile from the intersection of Peters Creek and Williamson roads revolve the worlds of two women who have more than just a little in common: Carol Franklin Wright and Carol Sue Wright Hodges, barbers by trade and Carol Wrights by birth or marriage. Both have been clipping locks, whiskers and sideburns in North Roanoke for more than two decades.
Their two worlds came together years ago when a package destined for Carol Franklin Wright's Starmount Barber Shop on Peters Creek Road ended up in the hands of Carol Wright Hodges (who is well-known by her maiden name because she works with her two brothers) at the Hollins Barber Shop on Williamson Road.
"I told her then I always wanted to meet her because we had the same name and profession," says Wright Hodges, who hand-delivered the package.
Though the shops are separated only by a series of strip malls, the mix-ups have been kept to a minimum over the years. Franklin Wright says she has more problems with people mixing up her shop with the Starmount Beauty Shop across the street.
Wright Hodges' customers have recommended friends to the Hollins shop who have accidentally showed up at the Starmount. "But that was OK," she said. "They finally wound up over here."
Ten years separates the beginnings of their careers, when both Wrights first tried working on women's hair before entering the male-dominated field of barbering.
Franklin Wright first worked as an apprentice in a Vinton beauty shop in 1959. "To tell you the truth, I went two weeks and I just didn't want to fool with it," she said. "The women were just too darn hard to please."
She was turned away from the barber school on the Roanoke City Market because she was a woman. For women to be accepted to the school, she said, "you had to have a men's bathroom and women's bathroom, so they couldn't take women."
"It's still mainly a male profession," said Annie McClure, senior instructor at the Virginia Hair Academy on Williamson Road, which averages three or four female barber graduates a year in a class of about 25. "There for a long time there weren't any women at all," she said.
Franklin Wright then answered an advertisement placed by Penn Woodford of the Bedford Barber Shop, who taught her the trade.
"The men barbers sort of resented the women barbers years ago," she said. "Three of us ladies from Bedford came and opened a shop. I don't think they thought any of us would stay in the business."
The customers had their doubts, too. "Even up to five years ago they'd come in and see it was a woman and turn around and leave," said Franklin Wright.
But the shop she opened with her friends at the corner of Barrens and Peters Creek roads was in business from 1964 to 1985, when the building was sold and the partners went their separate ways. She then converted the garage behind her house into a barbershop, keeping the Starmount name and some of its regulars.
"She's the only lady in the area that cuts my hair," said Bill Browning of Roanoke, who works for himself doing residential construction and repairs and likes to keep his hair "halfway between medium and short."
Wright Hodges was practically born into the trade. Her parents, Bennie and Birdie Wright, were both barbers and operated the Wright Barber Shop in Vinton. She worked there after high school, but she says her father "wouldn't let me do anything but crew cuts before I finished [beauty] school."
After beauty school, she worked for several months dying, bleaching, perming and setting hair at a shop near Crossroads Mall. "The chemicals bothered my hands and bothered my breathing," she said. "Today the perms are not as strong as they used to be."
In the decade that had passed since Franklin Wright had been turned away from the barber school on the City Market, the school had solved its plumbing problem and had begun to accept women. Wright Hodges graduated from the school, and later became the first woman at the five-chair Hollins Barber Shop, where she's worked with her brothers, Rich and Bennie Jr., for 21 years.
And the customers can get more than a cut for their money.
"I come in for a haircut and get conversation," said Bill Pyles, a Hollins shop customer and owner of The Appliance Outlet Inc. on Hershberger Road.
"Twenty years ago, you never saw a woman in a barbershop," said Wright Hodges, who now finds women in her chair 25 percent of the time. Her male customers, she says, were "apprehensive at first, until they found out I could cut hair."
And that, both Wrights can do, judging by how quickly the customers slip in and out of their spinning chairs.
Seven bucks will get you a trim from either one.
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Carol Franklin Wright (left) andby CNBCarol Wright Hodges met years ago when a package destined for Carol
Franklin Wright's Starmount Barber Shop was delivered to Carol
Wright Hodges at the Hollins Barber Shop on Williamson Road. color.