THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 29, 1995 TAG: 9512290760
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: THUMBS UP
SOURCE: BY JANELLE LA BOUVE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 137 lines
Scissors, clips, curlers, hair sprays and permanent wave solutions - these have been the tools of Kathryn B. Kidd's trade.
During her career as a hairstylist, which has spanned half a century, she has seen hairstyles come full-circle from spiral permanent waves to tight finger waves to teasing and the frizzies. Now, spiral perms are in fashion again.
``And razor cuts are back,'' she said.
``We used to do the French twist and the beehive,'' she said. ``For the beehive, first the hair was teased, then piled high atop the head. It would take two hours to do a head. It must have been in the 1960s that we teased everybody's hair.''
At 80, she's still creating curly wizardry three days a week.
For 25 years, Kidd ran her own shop in Deep Creek, Stroupe's House of Beauty. At one point, she employed 19 stylists and two barbers.
She recalls that one year, just before a high school prom, more than 200 Deep Creek girls came to the shop in search of the latest style.
``Folks came from all over,'' she said. ``They didn't have to have an appointment. One carload came over regularly from the Eastern Shore. They'd make a day of it.''
After her first husband died, Kidd sold a half interest in the salon to Sarah Ferree so that she could travel. Later, she bought it back.
But soon thereafter, she quit the business for the first time.
``I was 65 and had never gotten to stay at home,'' she said. ``I wanted to do some cooking and other things I'd never had time for.
``Some people don't retire well,'' she said. ``I told Billy (Kidd - her husband) I have to have a place to work.
``It's good for me to work,'' she said. ``I've done very well. I don't need to work for money, but I'm happier working. It gives me bingo money.
``We had a small house,'' she said. ``I just wanted a little place, so I could fix hair for just a few people. I promised him I wouldn't let it get out of hand.''
The addition nearly doubled the size of the original house.
``In a home beauty shop you're not supposed to have help,'' she said. ``It would have gotten out of hand again. Every day customers were calling. I was going like a house afire, and I was close to 70.
``So I retired again,'' she said. ``But I didn't want to get rid of the shop, not yet. I thought I might want to do a permanent now and then. I do try to keep it under control.''
Soon she was back at the work she loves, but it has never been necessary to contact former customers.
``They just find me,'' said Kidd, as she turned the styling chair and put a hand mirror in Mildred Moye's hand. ``Look at the back.''
``Yes, that's just what I wanted, a little something different,'' Moye said with a smile.
``What I like besides Kathryn's good work, is she's the best ever (stylist),'' said Moye, who has been Kidd's regular customer for about a year. ``She's fast, and she's pleasant.''
Although Kidd no longer takes new customers, she always has a waiting list. She even has a temporary replacement for a long-time customer who is recuperating from knee surgery.
Annette H. Tew has been one of Kidd's customers for 30 years.
``She's been a good friend,'' said Tew, who often plays bingo with Kidd. ``She is one of the most kind and generous people I've ever known.
``She's also the funniest person,'' Tew added. ``Sometimes her one-liners will make you roll. Something will just pop out of her mouth. We have laughed our heads off about a lot of stuff.''
Recently her children held a dual celebration in honor of Kidd's 80th birthday and a reunion for stylists from Stroupe's House of Beauty. Debbie K. Holloway attended the party.
At 15, Holloway became a shampoo girl at Stroupe's. She continued sudsing and massaging scalps through her high school/vocational technical school. This gave Holloway on the job experience while she completed the requirements to become a licensed hair stylist. For the next eight years, she styled hair at Stroupe's.
``For all the operators who worked there, it was like family,'' Holloway said. ``It's never been the same working for anyone else. You could go to her for anything whether you needed a loan or anything else.''
``Some stylists went on to open their own shops,'' Kidd admitted. ``They may have had a get-rich-quick idea. But some have told me they never had it so good as when they were with me.''
Kidd kept a little black book. When her stylists needed to borrow money, she simply said ``write it down in the black book.''
``One (stylist) borrowed the down payment for a home, and she paid back every cent, too,'' said Kidd, who still has the black book somewhere. ``When they needed something, they knew they could get it.
``In the shop, we had a little fund,'' she said. ``We adopted an Indian girl in North Carolina. Every month for years we sent money to Save the Children for her.''
While her children were growing up, Kidd's shop was in her home.
``When I first came to Portsmouth, I fixed hair in my living room,'' she said. ``It was against the law, and I got turned in. I was real poor and could hardly afford a sink, so I'd slip and do hair to buy bread, literally.''
She recalls that on one occasion a former public official helped her get a permit for her shop.
``I kept trying to get a permit, but the city zoning wouldn't allow it,'' she said. ``Then one day, the city attorney called me and told me to pick up my permit. I had never seen him, but I'll never forget him because he helped me at a bad time in my life.
``He told me to fix everybody's hair I could find because he'd been hearing about me for a long time,'' she said.
She often worked a 16-hour day, especially on Thursdays, payday for Navy yard employees.
When she ``got in a tight,'' as Kidd put it, her two daughters helped in the shop.
Dixie Cooper and Judy Carraway remember standing on wooden Coca-Cola crates to shampoo mom's customers.
``I didn't like it at all,'' Carraway said. ``But if we wanted something extra, that's how we earned our money. When I wanted money for a bathing suit, mother said work for it.''
When she was little more than a toddler, Cooper sang for the customers, who rewarded her with tips.
``Mom gave me my first perm when I was 18 months old,'' said Cooper, 42. ``I would sit in dad's lap while mom gave me a perm. She could probably close her eyes and wrap curls for a permanent wave.
``I was in her shop all the time,'' said Cooper, a manager for Pioneer Title Insurance Co. ``I fixed my dolls' hair right in the shop. Most of my dolls were bald because I had either cut their hair or given them a perm.''
Kidd's desire to become a hair stylist began when she was about 14 and fixing her friends' hair. When she asked her father about attending beauty school, his response was negative.
``There were six of us,'' Kidd said. ``My dad said that since the other children didn't have a chance (to attend a trade school), I couldn't go either. But, boy, the first chance I had after my husband and I moved from North Carolina to California, I enrolled.''
By then Kidd was 25, had a son and lived in San Jose, Calif., where she received her training at Myers Beauty School. She's proud of the fact that she has passed the state board requirements for beauticians in four states. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by JIM WALKER
Kathryn Kidd has been a hiarstylist for 50 years. She's still
working three days a week.
by CNB