The buzz of lithium-powered hair clippers nearly drowned out the Christmas music playing from speakers sitting on a downtown Little Rock sidewalk.
Tufts of hair were sprinkled on the concrete, traces of the people who have come, eaten breakfast, gotten a haircut and gone.
A 73-year-old from Texas got his head shaved. A 60-year-old chef from New Orleans got a trim.
A mother brought her five children so the oldest three could get haircuts. Her oldest girl, 9, wanted the ends snipped off and the rest braided like Elsa's hair in Frozen. Her boys wanted stars shaved into the sides of their head.
"Now kids aren't going to make fun of you at school," the 7-year-old boy's sister tells him, after examining his new haircut.
They got the haircuts for free from four Little Rock stylists who spent Dec. 2 cutting hair on Main Street. The four hope to continue to provide this service for the homeless about every three months.
"It was just something that was on my heart," organizer Clayton Keith says.
Keith, 42, owns Clayton Keith Salon in Little Rock, and two of the other stylists involved work for him. He got his license when he was 26, but started cutting hair when he was a teenager.
"My friends at school, they would come over, and I would just cut it in the garage," he says. "Then, I started cutting my dad's hair. And then my brother's hair. I just always knew how to do it."
He also cut hair for his fellow officers-in-training while he was at a police academy in Arkansas. He always came in a little early at the end of the weekend to set up a station, and charged $2 per trim.
He was a police officer in Danville for three years and in Dardanelle for two. When he was on the force, he worked often with the Boys and Girls Club and started a bicycle safety program for children.
The program taught the kids about proper safety equipment and Keith wrote down their names and the serial numbers on their bicycles so he could track them if they were stolen.
"I did all this after-hours," Keith says. "I wasn't paid to do any of that, so I was volunteering, but I learned it mostly from my parents."
When Keith was young, his family was living in California. Summer vacation was spent driving for hours to Arkansas to visit family, including an uncle who was a police officer. The uncle helped inspire Keith to become an officer later, and gave him his first set of handcuffs with Keith's name engraved into the silver metal.
On the summer trips to the Natural State, Keith's dad would often pull over to pick up hitchhikers and let them ride as far as they needed in the backseat of the truck. Usually, his father would offer to give the rider a sandwich and a cold soda.
Keith says he remembers one instance when the ice chest in the bed of the truck was empty, and they picked someone up with nothing to offer.
"When the guy gets out ... my dad went back there and -- this is the crazy part -- he opens up the ice chest, and it's full of drinks and sandwiches. My dad swears to this day that it was an angel that he picked up," Keith says.
Their family also took in people who needed a place to stay. One who stayed for three months was named Tom, and he taught Keith's dad to make a soup with ground beef and potatoes that became a staple food of Keith's childhood.
"It was not out of the ordinary for us to have a guy ... live in our guest bedroom because he [Keith's dad] had such a kind heart that he would take in strangers, friends of friends, people from church, just whoever needed a home and a place to stay," Keith says.
Keith asked his mom to make Tom's Soup when he and his wife traveled to visit for Christmas. The couple is expecting their first child in the spring -- a girl who will be named Lucy Kate.
He left policing during his first marriage; he didn't have enough time for his wife and stepson, and had always wanted to cut hair. He was still living in Russellville at the time, and built up a clientele there.
While he was working at the hair salon in Russellville, after his divorce, he met his current wife, Jessica. She would come in and get her hair cut by one of the women Keith worked with, and they would talk.
"We went on our first date, and we've been inseparable ever since. And that was March 8, 2010," Keith says.
When he and Jessica moved to Little Rock, he left his clientele in the hands of Jeff Kulp, who came out to give free haircuts with Keith in December. Kulp says Keith helped him keep clients when he was in Russellville.
"He likes to see other people succeed as much as he likes to succeed," Kulp says.
The two share a love of Justice League movies, although Keith may be the bigger fan, Kulp says.
"He's the type of person that always wants to give, never expecting to receive," he says, watching his friend show a boy who had spent the night before in a homeless shelter how to style his new hairdo.
Friends say when Keith asked them to help out, they didn't hesitate.
"He goes out of his way to make sure that you're happy or taken care of," hairdresser Alicia Miller explains.
Their next event will be in conjunction with Project Homeless Connect at St. Joseph Catholic Church Parish Hall in Conway from 4-7 p.m. Tuesday. There will be hot meals, haircuts and dental services for the homeless at the event, says Jema Quintana, a project representative.
Donations can be dropped off or mailed to the organization's office at 707 Robins St., Suite 118; Conway, Ark. 72034.
Keith hopes the program will grow through events like this and by continuing to cut hair for free in Little Rock every three months.
"We might only get five or six people today, but maybe next time we'll have 20 or 30," he said before the December event. "I don't know. I'm hoping more people will start coming in from other salons."
Keith and his team members did about 10 haircuts the first day, and his first was Carol Raia, a Louisiana man who got his last haircut at the Salvation Army.
Raia explains to him through a thick accent how he had been forced out of New Orleans and away from his job as a cook at an Italian restaurant by Hurricane Katrina.
"I felt different before, but I feel more different now," says Raia, 60. "I just wanted somebody to talk to me."
He picked up his cup of coffee, put a breakfast sandwich in his pocket and gave Keith a hug before leaving.
"That hits your heart, right there," Keith says, blinking back tears and shaking the hair out of his apron.
High Profile on 01/21/2018