Mt. Airy barber still has eight years to go to match the late Greensboro hair cutter, Wade York.
Barber Russell Hiatt still has some years of cutting to go before catching the late Wade York of Greensboro, who spent almost seven decades with comb and scissors in hand.
"The Communicator," a news letter published by Mt. Airy businessman Gary York, reports that Russell Hiatt, owner of Floyd's City Barber Shop on Main Street in Mt. Airy, is celebrating his 60th year behind the chair.
Floyd's, of course, is the shop Mt. Airy native Andy Griffith used a model for the barber shop in the Andy Griffin Show, the TV series that ran from 1960-68. In real life, Hiatt used to clip Griffith's hair when the actor was growing up in the Granite City.
Hiatt is still eight years behind York, who was forced to quit barbering at age 92 in 1985 after a 68-year career.
York's shaky hands began cutting customers at the King Cotten-Burgess (sic) Barber Shop on what was then East Sycamore St. (now Feb. 1 Place)
His 80-year-old partner, Robert Burgess, made York quit. York died shortly after that. Burgess died in 1994 and the shop stayed opened until the last of its barbers, Clyde Gaither, died in 1996.
Another barber shop later operated there for awhile, but the space has been empty for years. A shoe store will open in the space soon.
Although he couldn't prove it, York boasted of being America's oldest, still practicing barber. He had started in 1918 during World War I when drafted into the Army and assigned to cut hair of soldiers. He says he actually was working before that, giving haircuts to farmers on the porch of his father's farm in Randolph County.
York could never prove he was the nation's oldest barber. No one had surveyed. In 2003, The Guinness Book of World Records conducted a search and found the honor at that time belonged to Peta Vita, 93, of Port Chester, N.Y. He had been cutting hair for 81 years.
Vita died not only after that.
But was Vita really the record holder? The New York Times reported earlier this year Aristides Demetriou, a Cpriot American, had retired after barbering in Cyprus and New York City for 85 years.
