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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Barbers Need Heirs Friends Push Rathdrum Barber Out Of Retirement

After 40 years of standing up on the job, Don Royse moved to Rathdrum to enjoy his retirement.

He bought a miniature horse, and kicked back, happy that his barbering days were finally over.

He was wrong.

Rathdrum has only one barbershop, locals observed pointedly. And that’s open only Mondays and Tuesdays. They told Royse they were tired of driving to Coeur d’Alene, just to get a haircut.

“I kind of got talked into opening,” Royse said recently, snipping hair in his new shop next to Burger Heaven.

Despite a steadily rising number of heads in Idaho, the number of barbers has been steadily shrinking. The state Bureau of Occupational Licenses says there are 1,008 barbers today, down from 1,150 in 1978.

The decline would be a lot sharper than that, said supervisory investigator Budd Hetrick, except for an influx of barber reinforcements from out of state, especially California.

In Boise, Larry Hicks, the head of the state’s only barber school, the Continental College of Beauty and Barber Styling, blames the long decline on fashion. Longer hair in the 1960s and 1970s, he said, sent many men to cosmetologists. Idaho has more than 9,000 cosmetologists, a 51 percent increase since 1978.

Still, Hicks is bullish on barbers. Based on his class numbers, Hicks predicts that the decline will soon reverse itself.

“Shorter hair’s coming back, and there’s more people who want barbers to cut their hair,” he said. “I’ve never seen so many people interested in barbering.”

In recent years, he said, he’d train about five new barbers a year. This year, he’s teaching 20.

“I see barbering going up, up, up,” he said.

In Rathdrum, Royse feels the same.

“There’s still a lot of men that go to the beauty shops,” said Royse. “But I think they’re coming back. They get tired of making appointments. They get tired of paying high prices. And they don’t like going to women, who fiddle with their heads.”

The Idaho Legislature voted overwhelmingly this spring to ease the requirements for becoming a barber instructor.

Hicks was delighted.

“I sit here, seeing numbers (of students) increase,” he said, “and there’s no way to get more instructors.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo