Carrying on my Grandmother’s Legacy

When I was a little boy, we would visit my grandparents in Waycross, GA often. My brother and I would go out and watch the trains as they rolled by a block down her street, and would often get in trouble for throwing pecans at each other in the back yard.

Our family has had the entrepreneur spirit throughout all the generations. My grandfather on my Dad’s side had a meat sales business, and my grand-aunt on my mom’s side made and sold ceramics.

My grandmother “Amma” had a salon in a long shed behind her house, and would often cut our hair during our visits. Her salon was always busy, and my brother (who now runs a the fantastic Koloa Zipline in Hawaii) and I would hang out there in the air conditioning during some of the hotter summer days.

While I was a student at the Gwinnett Barber Institute, my mother told me that she had Amma’s shears somewhere in the house and that she wanted to make sure that I got them. A few weeks following Mom’s passing, we found the shears in a drawer in her office.

Her shears now live in a shadowbox with her picture on my station.

I’m a little bit jealous about one of her sets… her blending shears (the ones on the right) are great for making textures in hair. They were made very well and can cut today as well as they did on day one. I had to fight the urge to start using them. However, being left-handed made the decision to put them into the box much easier.