Jack Hanna

By Mary Alice Garrett

This story originally appeared October 2, 2008 in The News Journal of Wilmington, Delware.

Jack's Newport Barbershop in Newport is as much a local meeting place as a place to get a haircut.

That's because Newport-born Jack Hanna has had his finger on Newport's pulse, along with cutting hair, for almost 68 years. Now 81, Hanna continues to operate his one-man barbershop at 116 E. Justis St.

Loyal customers, like Terry Van Gorder, say Hanna can't retire or they would lose their lifeline to the community.

Many stop in weekly just to sit and chat. Others come to read (or borrow) his large collection of National Geographic magazines.

"Even the mailman sits in here to eat his lunch," said Hanna's daughter, Pamela Hanna.

"We solve the problems of the world every time I go in there," said Van Gorder.

"If you need to find out what's going on in Newport, Jack's the man to see," he added.

Fred Crocker agrees. "We talk a little bit about politics and things that go on around the town," said Crocker, who has known Hanna for 50 years and stops in the shop almost every day.

"We talk about the traffic, politics and speeding tickets," added David Goff.

Hanna was president of the former Newport Building and Loan Association, the last of its kind in the country where shareholders banked at barber and butcher shops. The building and loan was Delaware's second oldest financial institution behind the Milford Bank. It last operated behind Hanna's barbershop. In 1994, it sold its charter to Berwyn Holdings Inc., based in Delaware.

Hanna, who was Newport's mayor from 1973-83, keeps up with local government. Just recently, town officials tried to put a new red-stamped sidewalk outside his shop. Hanna told them he didn't want "a red cookie-cutter sidewalk" and that the money would be better spent elsewhere.

Turns out he got a regular cement sidewalk. He heard later that batches of the reddish cement didn't match anyway, and that they had reverted to traditional sidewalks, like Hanna's, throughout the town.

Hanna is happy the shop has remained a popular gathering spot.

"Nobody ever tells a lie, though they stretch the truth once in awhile," he joked. "Even people who are on vacation will stop in. They'll say, 'I saw so and so.' It kind of keeps you current.

"I hear a lot of stuff I guess fellows wouldn't tell their wives. I turn my collar around and listen to them," Hanna added.

The pine-paneled shop is filled with an eclectic assortment of stuff: duck decoys, autographed baseballs and bobble-head figures, American Indian décor, lighthouse photographs, a lapel pin collection and artwork of bygone Newport businesses.

There's a vintage Coca-Cola machine which Hanna bought from the Minquas Fire Company, the home of his first barbershop. He paid $50 for it, and has been told it's worth more than $5,000 today. He keeps it stocked with glass bottles of the popular beverage.

"People are always wanting to buy it off me," said Hanna, adding it's not for sale.

There's also an autographed picture of Newport native and Conrad graduate Dallas Green. The inscription reads, "To Newport's best barber and special friend." Hanna also has Green's baseball cards from when he pitched for the Phillies and managed the New York Yankees.

Hanna called the Phillies' front office and tried in vain to schedule a parade and dinner for Green after the Phillies won the World Series in 1980.

One day, Green walked in for a haircut, and Hanna nabbed him. Three weeks later, there was Green signing autographs for his former Newport neighbors.

Hanna said life was much simpler when he was growing up in Newport.

"It was nice. We made our own fun," he recalled.

Neighborhood baseball games consisted of a tree for first base and telephone poles for second and third, "and they weren't evenly spaced," Hanna noted.

He picked wild blackberries and sold them to make spending money. At age 13, he became an apprentice to barber Jack Houston in Silview. Hanna stayed with Houston until he finished Conrad High School and then opened in the fire station, where he stayed for 10 years.

"There's an old joke: Did you ever leave a customer in the chair and go on a fire? Yeah, we did once," Hanna recalled.

After leaving the fire station site, Hanna opened in a building under what is now the Newport Bridge and Del. 141. After being there for 10 years, the state of Delaware forced him to leave, calling it "the right of eminent domain.,

"I haven't gotten over that yet," Hanna said.

He moved to his present shop 35 years ago. He bought it from the late undertaker Earl Nichols, who had it as an escape from highway encroachment.

Haircuts were 25 cents for men when Hanna started barbering. Sixteen years ago, he raised the price to $8. Today, it's $12, and $5 for a beard trim.

Hanna still cuts the old-fashioned way and does not offer stylings, perms or color.

Shaves "have fallen by the wayside," he said. "It used to be, you laid a guy back for a shave, and two fellows would walk out the door."

Hanna still uses vibrator- and motor-driven clippers and "smooths it out with scissors and comb."

Hanna doesn't have any plans to retire.

"I enjoy what I'm doing. I enjoy meeting the fellows," he said.

And where does Hanna goes for his haircuts?

"I go to an expert, " he said. "I do it myself. I can do it by feel."