Barber’s longevity is a cut above

Five days a week, Richard Lundy opens up his shop at 6 a.m.

The small, red-brick building on East Central near Woodlawn is tucked between homes and businesses. Inside is a single barber chair and a couple of vinyl couches for customers wait their turn for a trim.

Hung on the wall, alongside drawings of Wichita aircraft and pictures of John Wayne, is a certificate from the Kansas Board of Barbering.

Earlier this year, Lundy, 81, was one of seven barbers recognized by the board for 60 years of service.

Growing up in Ellsworth, Lundy said his father was a barber. After high school, he decided to follow in the family business and moved to Kansas City to start barber college.

“I’m not a ratty person that would cause trouble in school, I was very quiet and bashful,” he said. “I decided that barbering might be the best thing to do, and here I am.”

It’s not uncommon for a barber to go 50 or 60 years without receiving any recognition, said Sonia Sprouse, director of licensing at the Kansas Board of Barbers. When she joined the board in November, she decided to change that and began asking other barbers and board members who deserved a certificate of achievement.

“Richard Lundy was on everybody’s list,” Sprouse said. “He was literally the only person that every person in barbering knew.”

Currently, the state licenses 1,250 barbers, including seven who, like Lundy, are still working after 60 years of barbering.

In towns across the state, a barbershop is the “hub of the community” Sprouse said. She described the special personal connection between a barber and his clients.

“These barbers, they know your family, too,” she said. “Their customers, they watch their kids grow up, and they know when you hit your high and low points in your lives.”

After finishing his training, Lundy said he moved to Hutchinson to start barbering. Soon after, he heard about a space for sale in Wichita, and in the late 1950s, opened his first shop at Kellogg and Grove.

Kendall Lundy, Richard’s son, remembers weekends spent with his brothers at the barbershop. He said his father had all types of people in his chair: from doctors to lawyers to businessmen.

In the late 1970s, the Kellogg expansion pushed Richard Lundy out of his shop. His next stop was a shop inside Rose Bowl East, a bowling alley on East Kellogg.

“I built up a clientele there, right close to the people over in the airplane places, and that's when I started opening up at six in the morning, and I still hold onto that because I’ve done it almost all my life now,” Richard Lundy said.

In 2003, highway expansion creeped in again, and the barber business moved to its current location on Central.

Despite all the moving, Lundy said he has maintained a solid clientele for the past several decades.

Roger Mathews can’t remember when he first started going to Lundy for his haircuts, but said it has been well over 30 years.

“There are barbers, then there are hair something-or-other places,” Mathews said. “There are few barbers left in the world.

“He is my barber. I will go anywhere to be with him.”

Lundy’s barbering clients extend not just across decades, but across generations as well, Kendall Lundy said.

“There are some that started when their fathers brought them in as young boys, and now they are adults bringing their children, so there’s at least second-generation families,” Kendall Lundy said.

“It’s to me unbelievable that one person is doing the same job for that length of time, most people retire when they’re 65 years old,” Kendall Lundy said.”

As far as he knows, Kendall Lundy said, his dad has never taken a day off from his five-days-a-week business, even for vacations. Kendall Lundy said as he gets older, his father is rethinking his busy schedule, but retiring won’t come easy.

“He’s looking toward retirement in the near future. It’s kind of mixed emotions,” Kendall Lundy said “He certainly feels a certain loyalty to his customers.”

This story was originally published August 7, 2016 at 8:14 AM with the headline "Barber’s longevity is a cut above."