BY TYLER GILLESPIE, Neighborhood News Bureau
A bleached-blonde woman sat down in barber Dale Jones’s chair for a free fade on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Hair by Ahsile.
“I wish people would say ‘Happy MLK Day,” Jones said as his clippers buzzed, “like they do ‘Merry Christmas’.”
For the past ten years, the shop has offered no-charge services for the homeless community as part of its MLK Day of Service. This year, the event’s “day of pampering” included washes, cuts, and manicures to go along with free food and clothes.
Jones has worked at Hair by Ahsile for a little over a year. The shop at 844 49th Street North in St. Petersburg, Fla. is his family. Literally.
“My aunt owns the shop,” he said. “My uncle is in here, my cousin, another aunt.”
Jones will turn 37 this week and has two days off after MLK day. He’s looking forward to some fun.
“Every year I turn passed 25, the year they say we don’t make it out of the hood,” he said. “We celebrate.”
Friends for over 40 years
Pastor Deborah Hill became friends with Brenda Gilbert in the sixth grade. In the years after their high school graduation, Hill
left for the military.
After 20 years of service, she came back to the St. Pete area and quickly re-connected with Gilbert.
“Our visions are similar,” said Hill. “We both have a passion for helping those who are disadvantaged.”
By noon on Hair by Ahsile’s MLK Day of Service, Hill’s New Hope of Glory Ministries church van had picked up four loads of 15 people from various homeless shelters.
“When people can’t get their hair done – it does something to them,” she said. “The fact they’re able to receive the service makes a difference.”
Throughout the day, Hill and other volunteers filled multiple roles: ran desk, shampooed, and served food.
“On this day, you fit in where you can,” Hill said. “Everybody has to pull up their sleeves and work together.”
Inner beauty
Pastor Anthony Jones helped Carol Kapelke out of her wheelchair and into the shampoo station. As he began to massage her temples, Kapelke touched a scar on her forehead.
“This is from surgery,” she said, “and this – this is from last night. I fell on the concrete.”
Kapelke closed her eyes.
“I look like an old woman,” she said. “All I see is the lines.”
As soon as the words left Kapelke’s mouth, Pastor Deborah Hill – at the nearby shampoo station – turned to her.
“You’re beautiful,” she said. “That’s just you telling yourself that you’re not.”
Hill leaned closer to Kapelke.
“Say I am beautiful,” she said. “Say I am somebody.”
Kapelke’s voice, quiet at first, grew louder.
“I am beautiful,” she said. “I am somebody.”
Moving to Florida
Dawn Herman, 54, always knew she wanted to become a graphic designer. In the 1990s, she went to one of the first Macintosh
training schools in Atlanta, Georgia. Herman worked at a big printing company after that then moved around the country with her Air Force husband.
The couple ended up in Mississippi, and Herman worked for ten years as a graphic designer at a university. Then, she went through a divorce and decided to move to Florida.
Eventually, she said, she found work in the art department at a newspaper.
“We went through a lot of changes with the internet,” she said. “They thought they could save a lot of money outsourcing work.”
As newspapers around the country re-worked business plans, Herman said she got fired in 2012.
“It really threw me for a loop,” she said. “I lost everything – my job, my house, my car. Everything went to hell in a handbasket.”
Herman had no family in Florida and nowhere to go. She ended up on the street.
“It can happen to anybody, honey,” she said. “It’s one paycheck. It’s so quick.”
Herman found a spot in Pinellas Hope tent city for the homeless. Herman, who has back issues, has had difficulty finding work and is currently applying for disability.
But she has hope.
“Today is the happiest I’ve been in a long time,” she said after she got her hair done. “To be out with regular people doing regular things. It’s a good day.”