Barber stays sharp, 61 years strong

"I missed four days about five to six years ago," Currier said. "I had a heart attack."

His heart kept beating and Currier kept cutting, a fixture at Lee's Barber Shop for more than six decades.

"I did my apprenticeship under Jim Streit and I've been here ever since," said Currier, 82. "I have no intention of retiring. I don't like the idea."

Retirement might be an option, but it's not much of one, according to this native of Bellingham, Washington, who moved to the Iowa Great Lakes as a child and graduated from Spirit Lake High School in 1952.

"I grew up roughly between The Peacock (a bar) and The Roof Garden (a dance hall)," Currier said.

Currier served in the U.S. Navy for three years following high school, performing duty as an aerial gunner and serving in aviation ordnance. Much of his tour was spent aboard a carrier off the coast of Japan during the Korean War.

"I was only 17 or 18 at the time," he said. "It was a big adventure. I felt I was doing a service for the U.S. I felt like it was the thing to do."

The thing to do upon his return home was to attend barber college in Sioux City. Currier completed the course and served as an apprentice in his hometown. He stayed and bought the business in 1967, not long after Streit suffered a stroke.

"There were three chairs in here at one time," said Currier, who noted that his wife, Bea, still works at Hy-Vee. "I had one guy, Ira Garvis, who worked for me for 37 years. He's in Texas now."

Other barbers came and went at Lee's Barber Shop. At some point several years ago, Currier resisted the urge -- or simply didn't have the energy -- to train another apprentice. He's been on his own ever since.

"I have Thursdays and Sundays off," he said. "I work on Saturdays until 4:30 or 5 p.m."

The fact he's self-employed allows Currier to close if he must. His independence also allows him the freedom to make house calls, which he still does, or serve those who reside in local nursing homes.

"I've also done hospital calls," he said, and mentioned the fact he's seen a number of clients for their final haircut, as they rest for their own funeral at the funeral home.

When he started in this trade, a haircut cost $1. These days, he charges $15. He used to offer shaving, but quit the practice when it required the use of rubber gloves.

"I'll talk all subjects," he said, "and I keep this to track the average date of the ice going out at the lakes. We talk sports and politics and the subjects change every 10 minutes."

The Curriers, parents of three grown children, have lived on Big Spirit Lake, East Lake Okoboji and West Lake Okoboji.

The barber sails and fishes, and notes his preference for eating perch and walleye. Catching a bluegill on a fly rod makes for an entertaining afternoon.

"Bluegills on a fly rod are very active, like little barricudas," he said.

Currier also served as a ski patrol for decades, once toiling as regional director for the National Ski Patrol, an area covering Iowa and portions of Minnesota, South Dakota and Illinois.

"I learned to ski in Dickinson County, at Hinshaw Heights, which became Indian Hills Golf Course," he said.

Back then, the winters were more of an idle time in the Iowa Great Lakes, one change he's seen while tending to a business all these years in downtown Spirit Lake.

"It used to be that for the 12 weeks of summer, we'd be extremely busy," he said. "Then, school calendars changed and so did the traffic. And then lakeshore property took off. Now, we have condos and people living here pretty constant, year 'round."

It keeps people moving, and men moving in and out of a barber shop on Hill Avenue, where the barber has been a constant for 61 years.