HIGH PROFILE: Jerry Hood of Jerry's Barber Shop in the Heights

On the back wall of Jerry's Barber Shop in the Heights, among the pictures of politicians and framed newspaper and magazine stories, is a black-and-white photo of a man and a young boy.

The man is Artie Hood. The boy is his 5-year-old son, Jerry. They're standing in front of the Belleville barber shop Artie owned for more than three decades.

It's a bright spring morning in late April and the 72-year-old version of Jerry Hood sits on a stool next to a barber's chair near the back of the shop that carries his name in Little Rock's Heights neighborhood. He started working here in 1969, when the small shop was owned by barber Vic May.

Oh, he'd had other jobs -- there were a couple of stints working at Little Rock factories -- but after growing up watching his father, a barber's life seemed more to his liking.

"We lived right behind the shop," Hood, the youngest of three brothers, says of his childhood in Belleville, a small town in Yell County. "All Dad had to do was walk through and into the barber shop. Of course, I was in and out all the time. In the winter it was warm and in the summer it was cool, and it always smelled good."

His first stop out of barber school was in Helena, working in a shop at the Cleburne Hotel on Cherry Street. He wanted to get back to Little Rock, though, and jumped at the chance to work at May's shop.

After 18 years cutting hair alongside May, Hood bought the place and put his name out front.

Though this is a barber shop on a busy street in Arkansas' largest city, it somehow has a small-town vibe that is almost anachronistic. It's an old-fashioned barber shop where the conversation -- politics, gossip, sports, teasing -- is almost as important as getting one's ears lowered. And don't ask for highlights or a perm. There are haircuts ($17 and up), beard trimming ($8) and shoeshines ($8 and up).

It's also a place to be seen. Movers and shakers such as Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former governors Mike Beebe and Mike Huckabee, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton and U.S. Rep. French Hill are among the heavy hitters whose photos hang on the wall.

Pulaski County Sheriff Doc Holladay is a regular.

"It's always a good time when you come in here," he says after Hood has finished giving him a haircut. "Good conversation, good people. There's politics spoken in here, a lot of opinions. You've got students, businessmen, poor people, rich people. It's a great gathering place for the neighborhood."

Rick Fleetwood, a longtime customer who is also mostly bald, elicits a round of laughs when he says, "I don't even have hair and I come here."

Hood's niece, Sherry Lloyd, and his grandson, Codey Cameron, continue the family legacy as barbers and both cut hair at the shop.

"They're good barbers," Hood says. "They've got good personalities, and they meet the public good."

Other barbers on staff include new owner Michael Jackman, Keith Ballentine and Lee Morris. Jim Laster is the shop's longtime shoeshine man.

Over the decades, Hood has presided over his shop, cutting hair, sharing stories with his clientele and becoming a Kavanaugh Boulevard fixture.

"He's three bubbles off level sometimes, but you get more than just a haircut here," Fleetwood says. "Most of all, I like the fellowship you get here. It does take you back in time, when you were a little boy and went to a barber shop. Not a salon. But a barber shop."

But things have changed.

Years of standing over customers and cutting hair have taken a toll on his back, shoulders and neck.

"My back was first," he says. "It got worse and worse, to where I couldn't hardly walk. So the doctor told me I needed to have surgery."

Painful spurs in his neck led to another surgery and he has a bad hip, but says "I don't want to be cut on anymore."

Along with all of this, there were personal tragedies he and his family have endured.

In October, Hood sold the shop to Jackman, a barber who had been working for him for about three years.

And though he has been cutting hair part time on Mondays and Wednesdays, Hood is finally hanging up his clippers.

"This has been my life," he says during an interview at a small table in the shop's narrow back room. "That's the reason I didn't want to retire. I still wanted to work some. I've had hundreds of customers where it's not just customer-barber. It's family almost, friends for sure. We've cried together, prayed together, gone through life together."

SPREADING THE WORD

He is a man of deep faith, the kind of faith that has been with him since he was a child in Belleville.

"As a young boy, very young, I would go out at night and lay on top of the storm cellar. I would look up at the stars. I could see the stars, the big ol' moon, and I knew there was something bigger than me and it was God. I went to church, but nature and the universe led me to him."

When he was 9 he turned his life over to Christ during a service at Belleville Baptist Church.

"Nobody coerced me or talked to me, I just walked up to the pastor and gave my life to the Lord as best I knew how," Hood says. "Later on I got baptized and there was something electrifying about that."

He remembers reading Bible passages to a fellow camper at a summer camp. It was his first attempt at witnessing for Christ, he says, but not his last.

As an adult, Hood spread the Gospel through various ministries, working in nursing homes, youth homes, prisons and even nightclubs.

He tells of going into a Little Rock bar in the early '70s and seeing a man alone with a bottle. The man's young daughter had died, his wife left him and he'd lost his position as a pastor.

"He said that he'd lost everything that meant anything to him," Hood recalls. "Of course, I reminded him of Job [and Job's trials that are recounted in the Bible]. We talked for a while and he said, 'Jerry, God surely sent you because when I got [back] to my motel room tonight, I was going to kill myself.'"

There was also the time Hood was ministering to prisoners at the Tucker Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction.

"I usually had from 15 to 20 men that came to my group," he says. "A lot of them came regularly. We became buddies, somewhat."

One day, two men who didn't regularly attend walked in late.

"I was teaching on how God is everywhere -- in the flowers, in the trees. These two guys stood up and said, 'If we were to take you hostage now, where would your God be?' About five other guys stood up and said, 'Over our dead bodies would you touch him.' And I said, 'There he is.'"

Along with his ministries, Hood has volunteered and served on the board at Little Rock Compassion Center, an inner-city mission that provides food and shelter for the homeless.

He looks out for his neighbors. An alarm system set up in his shop is connected to nearby stores. If there is trouble, a shop full of barbers can be called at the push of a button. And remember, these people are handy with razors and scissors.

STORYTELLER

Hood is writing a memoir detailing his life and his ministries called I Love to Tell the Stories. He has been at work on the book for years, scribbling away between haircuts. He then records it to tape and has a former court reporter friend type it up. He has another chapter or two to go, he figures, before it's finished.

In a chapter called "Testimony" he recounts his death.

It was 2002, and surgery on his heart required doctors to stop his heartbeat.

"I was laying there on the operating table and all of a sudden everything went black," Hood says. "Then I could look down and see them working on me. I had come out of my body. The whole room lit up brighter than the sun, and three men who came to me and said, 'Do not be afraid. We are the servants of God and we've come to tell you that he is not through with you yet.' And then I went back into my body."

Hood is aware that subjects like this might make some a bit uncomfortable.

"I try not to get too religious. I know it turns some people off," he says.

FAMILY TRAGEDIES

Over the years, his faith has been tested. His first wife, Dorothy, had brain damage from a car wreck. Hood adopted her two daughters from a previous relationship, Louann and Melinda, and the couple had another daughter, Kim.

That marriage ended in divorce. His second wife, Phyllis, passed away seven years ago after they'd been married more than 20 years. Louann died four years ago and Melinda died two years ago. His oldest brother also recently died (his other brother died years ago at 47 of a heart attack).

His current wife, Marie, worked with him at the shop until a recent fall forced her to cut back, and there are his own ailments that led him to sell the shop and eventually retire.

"The doctor told us we were the blind leading the blind. Very complimentary, wouldn't you say," Hood asks with a boyish grin and a twinkle in his eye, humor firmly intact. (Later, when asked if he was the one who killed any of the stuffed animal heads on the shop wall, he replies dryly that he does all his hunting at Kroger and Walmart.)

Despite his and Marie's ailments and the recent losses, Hood's faith remains firm.

"The last few years I've had a lot of health problems and family dying," he says. "I almost didn't know if I could make it. I told the Lord, 'You might have given me a mountain I can't climb.' But I did. All of the things that have happened in the last few months, I haven't been mad at God. I understood that death comes to all, even your children. I didn't get mad at him. I just would talk to him like Job talked to him and tell him this hurts. Bad."

NEW OWNER, OLD NAME

New owner Jackman went to barber school in the early '80s and remembers Hood from then.

"Jerry used to come to the Arkansas College of Barbering once or twice a year to talk to students," he says. "He would talk about how to treat customers, how to run your business and build your clientele."

Jackman, who co-owns the shop with his wife, Janet, has kept Hood's name on the sign, he says, because changing it would be like "buying Coca-Cola and calling it Billy Bob's Soda."

Speaking about his mentor between haircuts, Jackman says, "The first thing that comes to mind is his gentleness and kindness. I wanted to be in a Christian environment and God is No. 1 in his life. He treats people with such kindness and respect. He was the best in Little Rock. That's what I gravitated to, his kindness, his demeanor, his professionalism, he doesn't meet a stranger."

A BARBER WHO LOVES THE LORD

It has been a long interview, and the seats at the little table in the narrow room at the back of the shop are hard. Hood grimaces a bit as he shifts in his chair. The guy who has never met a stranger is telling another story, this one about his ministry to hitchhikers.

Hood was headed home from a Wednesday evening church service when he felt compelled to pick up a fella thumbing for a ride. In the story, he listens as the man talks about his doubts. Hood quotes Scripture to the hitchhiker and they pray together as Hood drives the hitchhiker to Conway.

At the beginning of the story, the hitchhiker noticed Hood's Bible in the car.

"Are you a preacher," he asked.

Hood replied, "I'm a lay minister. I do preach and I do teach and counsel, but really I'm just a barber who loves the Lord."

High Profile on 05/27/2018