Midway barber finds bittersweet road to retirement
BY BOBBI HAYCOX

Tom Kelly and his mom, Mildred, hope to have happier times in his new travel trailer after retirement.

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In four short weeks, Tom Kelly will lock the door of Midway Barber Shop for the very last time, and our community will lose another master barber to retirement. The owner of the property will remodel the building for his own use.

Tom's loyal customers are going to miss his quality hair cuts and the brief shoulder and neck message he gives as a finishing touch to each haircut.

"That massage is something special; I look forward to it every time I go," said Buzz Haycox, a long-time customer. "I even bought one of those massagers so that we could duplicate it at home."

According to Tom, barbering is a dying trade. He recalled some figures to prove it.

"In 1975, I remember getting a newsletter from the Florida regulatory agency that said there were 36,000 registered barbers in the state. The number stuck with me because it also stated that there were 360,000 real estate agents, and the ratio of 10 agents to every barber seemed strange, since an individual's repeated need for a barber's services was far greater than for that of a real estate agent."

"Today, while the population of the state has probably doubled, according to the Department of Professional Regulation, there are between eight and nine thousand registered barbers in Florida."

That is a big decrease and Tom ber is self-employed and he works on commission or rents his chair and space from the shop owner. He pays overhead and his own taxes as an independent contractor.

"This is an industry where there is no matching retirement fund, no sick pay, no benefits at all except what you are able to put aside yourself," he added. Imagining himself before a group of high school students on Career Day, he said he would be laughed off the stage when he told them, "You get to stand in a three-foot circle and move your arms up and down as fast as you can for eight to ten hours a day."

During his 45-year career, 25 of them spent in the Gulf Breeze area, Tom has seen the barber industry totally change. No longer is there a designation of Master Barber. In fact, he says that several years ago, there was a merging of cosmetology and barbering so that today, in order to be licensed, you have to do a permanent wave on the practical examination.

"I've never done a permanent wave in my life," he said. "I wouldn't even know where to start. When you try to make an industry be all things to all people, you lose your identity and when you try to do too many things, you wind up doing none of them well."

"There was a time when being a master barber was held in high esteem but no more, since they did away with that license and expanded the required services the barber must be able to perform."

For the past couple of years, Tom has only worked half days due to the nagging neck and shoulder pain he experiences when cutting hair.

"I can be off for a couple of days and it disappears, but about the middle of the first haircut each day, it returns. I know it has to do with the way I have to hold my head when I'm cutting hair."

While providing a needed service and earning the respect of many loyal customers has been rewarding for Tom over the years, he looks forward to retirement.

"I wanted to retire a little earlier, between the age of 62-65, but around that time, my wife, Anna Jane had a reoccurrence of her breast cancer and I had to keep working because we had no insurance," he explained.

In 1990, when she first contracted the disease, they had health insurance. And while dealing with the insurance company was not easy, her medical bills were paid. ums became unaffordable and he was forced to drop it.

And so as his wife fought her battle with the disease on and off over the last five years, Tom Kelly put aside his dream of retirement to afford the treatment and comfort his wife needed until January of this year when she passed away.

During her illness the couple planned for the day she would be cured and they would enjoy his retirement.

"We planned to return to Mississippi, where we have family, buy a little home and a travel trailer," he said. "She loved Disney World and wanted to go every year."

Three weeks prior to her death, Tom's mother, Mildred, came to help him with Anna Jane. She's been here for him ever since. Going forward with his retirement plans, he purchased a travel trailer and took delivery of it last week.

"We will sell the house and pay off the trailer," he said. "Then mother and I will buy a little home in West Point, Mississippi and travel when we can afford to do so. If the price of diesel doesn't come down, there will be far less traveling that I had hoped."

He figures that between his Social Security check and his Mother's, they can make it but it will be challenging. He will sell his Mississippi home when his mother, now 86, is no longer with him.

"I'm fixing to learn how to live on Social Security and I will be doing some big downsizing to do it."

In a few weeks, his retirement dream will become a reality, just not quite in the way he had hoped.