Newkirk’s Barber Shop: NKy couple, popular proprietors of ‘old school’ shop, perfectly typecast

By Ray Donnelly
Special to NKyTribune

Newkirk’s Barber Shop on Broadway Avenue in downtown Cincinnati is just north of Fourth Street. Its prior incarnation a few blocks northwest was called Sixth Street Salon, which never sounded quite right to its owner, Jim Newkirk, who is not a salon kind of guy. He’s strictly old school, striped pole hanging outside and every manner of powder and cologne at hand.

If you call for an appointment he issues a simple greeting, “Barber Shop,” and then it’s on you.

When sitting in his barber chair, however, you may not get a word in edgewise. Chances are you won’t mind.

Working side by side with his wife Donna, Jim has become a local fixture, operating his downtown shop for over three decades. They live in Crescent Springs.

As though typecast, Jim tells stories and generally entertains his clients for the duration of the visit. You may get the idea that the customer is a convenient prop and he would be just fine engaging an empty chair. He has a movie quote ready to support any discussion and will recite whole scenes if necessary, The Godfather being a specialty.

He is comfortable with almost any topic, except he has learned to stay away from religion. A lost street kid who was saved by barber school and by Donna, he got his first haircutting gig at the Netherland Plaza Hotel in 1965 and has been at it ever since. A stout man of 68 years, he retains a core of twitching, palpable energy and athleticism, and of decency. His personal story is one of small triumphs mixed with an almost unbearable tragedy.

In his favorite beach story, Jim is on vacation wading out in the ocean when he hears a distressed screeching noise and flapping in the waves and looks out to see a pelican that appears to be caught in web of a thick fishing line. Jim makes his way out and starts to pull the line to see if he can release the bird. But there is a problem: the harder he pulled, the stronger the tug he felt working against him.

He is confused but keeps pulling and finally it seems a human form is drawing closer. “At this point I think I’ve just pulled a stiff out of the ocean, a dead body,” Jim explains.

Instead, it was a very surprised scuba diver that Jim had somehow yanked gaspingly to the surface. “Even through his mask I could still see the stunned look on his face. His name was Mike.”

Well, Jim convinced Mike to help get the pelican to the beach, and they spent 20 minutes extricating the bird from the fishing line. Now free, the bird took a few awkward steps and flew out over the ocean, then turned and circled back over Jim’s head.

“I truly believe it was his way of saying thanks,” Jim says today.

While Jim may be the pulse of the operation, Donna is its lifeblood. A soft contrast to the masculine barber persona, she works 15 feet to the left of her husband but their bond is much closer than that.

A slim, attractive woman with light blue eyes and bursting shocks of deep red hair, she provides a perfect balance to the shop’s unpredictable atmosphere, always laughing with and never at the man she calls “Jimmy.” She still lights up at stories she’s heard a thousand times, providing sidelights to anyone lucky enough to be nearby. Donna could do without Jim’s passion for riding his motorcycle but that’s about it. A life partner in every sense.

After his mother died when he was 15, Jim lived for two years at the Bob Hope House, a home for at-risk boys in Cincinnati. Once released, he soon realized he was a kid without a lot of options.

“But like they say in Shawshank Redemption, I had to ‘get busy livin’ or get busy dying.’” So he took a job at a Frisch’s restaurant in Forestville, and was made its first-ever male carhop. “I needed the money, so I was willing to do just about anything. Lots of people made fun of me – ‘Oh Miss, can I get another Coke?’”

The restaurant had strict rules about repeating the customer’s order exactly, but Jim was battling a stuttering problem. “I just could not say the word ‘deluxe’ so I would repeat it as ‘cheeseburger with everything on it,’” Jim recalls. “Luckily Clarence, the manager, let me slide.”

It happened that Donna was also a car-hop there, and she helped train Jim. “I was attracted to her but I wouldn’t date her because I needed the job,” Jim explains. Clarence sensed a connection and locked them in the freezer so they would “kiss or something,” but Jim had none of it.

Finally one summer night, Donna and a girlfriend came by while Jim was sitting alone on a stoop on Sutton Avenue. They went out dancing. “We fell in love that night and we still feel the same way,” Jim says. The Newkirks got married in 1965 and soon had a baby daughter, Karen.

Through the years, the Newkirks have seen every sector of society walk through their door and served them all, from dignitaries and celebrities to the homeless.

Current Western and Southern Financial CEO John Barrett has been a client since the shop moved to Broadway. When asked about the Newkirks, Barrett says, “They are institutions in this town.” Then he reverts to the lively banter of the shop, and with good-natured kidding, offers, “I keep hoping to hear a fresh joke – but it’s the same old ones, or ones he steals from his clients.”

Barrett’s brother, Fran, a local attorney, likens the shop to a small town gathering place of another time where people would swap stories and renew acquaintances. “It’s more than a haircut,” he explains, “It’s an experience.”

Famous customers

President Gerald Ford walked in one day.

Jim’s chair was occupied, so Donna got the honor (“I still have a lock of his hair in an envelope somewhere”). Ford was renowned for clumsiness and did not disappoint. “We had an old fashion wooden barber pole inside the shop,” Jim says, “and sure enough he bumped his head on it walking out. True story.”

Jim even cut the hair of legendary comedian, Bob Hope, patron of his teenage home, and the irony was not lost on him.

An artful barber performs a delicate two step. He shares a fairly intimate space with his client and best works the area almost physically unnoticed, being careful not to slice an ear. At the same time, he respects the social component, gauging his subject’s mood, learning safe areas to tread, and acting as willing sounding board. Jim is a master at both.

He has endured arrogance, ignorance and about every strain of body odor, and has handled it with ease.

In the end he’s a man in his late sixties who earns his living on his feet. He is not rich, but he is self-made, and though he often hobnobs with the powerful, he leans decidedly toward the Everyman.

Crossing Fountain Square years ago he casually noticed a woman waiting for a ride. Just then a man walking past her decided to smash a heavy book across the woman’s nose, splattering blood everywhere. With no one else around the man went on his way as Jim walked toward him. Feeling he couldn’t let this offense go unchecked, Jim delivered short chop to the man’s throat, knocking him down, before going to the woman’s aid. Looking back does he regret his retaliatory blow? No. No he doesn’t.

Facing the worst

It may be true that nobody gets through life unscathed, but it is certain that the scars are not dispensed evenly.

Everything changed for the Newkirks in1987 when their daughter, Karen, began feeling weak and noticed two lumps on her neck. She was now 21 and engaged – an aspiring fashion model who loved cars and music, and had a rebellious streak, like her dad. She had her mom’s strong will and she would need it. Tensions grew as Karen’s condition worsened and nobody could explain to the Newkirks exactly what was wrong with their only child.

One day Jim got a call at work from Donna who told him their daughter had cancer. Struggling for breath, he felt his knees buckle, and braced himself against his barber chair. “I finished the haircut and then went to see Karen,” Jim recalls painfully.

Karen had contracted a rare cancer of the kidney, one which no specialist could really explain, much less treat. Soon Karen was at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, to have her kidney removed. Several return visits followed, and doctors there suggested a series of 12 experimental treatments.

Jim still has a recording of a conversation he had with Karen when she called after the eighth session to ask if she could stop the excruciating treatments and maybe come back later.

“It’s up to you honey, but I’d really love to see twelve,” Jim encouraged, pleading underneath. Karen continued the treatments. “I have never listened to that tape,” Jim says.

Karen returned to Cincinnati for radiation and chemotherapy. Nothing worked. Somewhere in this time of desperation, a doctor approached the Newkirks in a very public area of the hospital where Karen was staying and bluntly stated that Karen would not live to see her next birthday. The doctor also said he was going to tell Karen to get her affairs in order. This did not sit well with Jim, who feared Karen would give up if she heard this dark prediction. The doctor insisted it was his duty to let her know.

Jim replied, “If you tell her against my will, you’ll need a physician yourself.”

‘Love isn’t free’

The end came a few weeks later when Karen fell into a coma. Her parents kept vigil for long hours, with Jim sitting at the end of her bed. One night Jim got up to look out the window, and soon heard, “Where’s my Daddy ?” Jim sat back down. They were the last words Karen ever spoke.

Karen’s courageous fight was over, but the anguish for her parents remained acute and persistent. “We weren’t right for five years,” Jim says as Donna nods, “and we still think about her every day.”

The Newkirks understood they would never again be completely whole, and over time learned to accept it. When asked how they overcame the loss of a child, Jim says simply, “Love isn’t free.”

With an Irishman’s penchant to dream, Jim is always looking for opportunities and angles. He once drove two hours down to Churchill Downs to bet his whole stash, $500, on a big favorite but when he got there he decided to bet it all on a long shot. His horse won at the wire and Jim headed back home. “I just wanted to feel the rush,” he recalls.

Sitting in a gym locker room several years ago, Jim watched a balding man using a basic razor cut his scalp, causing blood to flow profusely down the sides of his head. Jim drove home thinking of the scene, woke that night at four a.m. with an idea, and began sketching designs for what he calls a ‘buzz” razor, a simple construct which allows men to trim their beards, goatees and even short hair to a stubble length, using the razor in the traditional way.

The Newkirks got a patent and developed a prototype that Jim would happily demonstrate to anyone who would listen. The fact that their shop is two blocks from the one of the largest sellers of shaving products in the world was, well that was a good thing. And in the spring of 2014, a Proctor and Gamble representative did stop by. He said it was an intriguing product and he would be in touch. One by one, agonizing weeks passed, as Jim and Donna waited for a call they hoped would change their lives.

A true healing and reason for joy

The call came in early June of last year, though it was not the one they expected. Donna answered the phone. This was Dr. Marston Linehan from the National Cancer Institute, the caller explained, and he was so happy to have found her after all these years. He was the doctor who had operated on Karen He had been so sorry that he was not able to do more for her, and it had motivated him throughout his career, leading to important research. Donna was stunned, curious and exhilarated at the same time; she asked would he please tell Jim what he had told her. A voice from the past had spoken on the subject of the most defining experience of their lives.

In November of 2014, a package arrived. In it was a letter from Dr. Linehan. The signature indicated that he was now Chief of Urologic Oncology for the National Cancer Institute, in other words, the leader of national efforts in the area of kidney cancer research. The contents left the Newkirks in shocked amazement.

The letter related that in order to understand Karen’s cancer, his team has saved tissue from her tumor, which became instrumental in further research. In 1996, he and his team reported that this type of cancer was caused by a gene on the X chromosome called TFE3, which was found in Karen’s tissue. It continued: “This was therefore the very first scientific paper reporting TFE3 as the cause of kidney cancer. Your daughter, Karen, was, therefore, the very first person diagnosed with this type of kidney cancer in the world … Everything we know about TFE3 kidney cancer started with your daughter… We were able to develop a way for doctors to easily diagnose this type of cancer and we have described how to manage these patients clinically.”

The final paragraph began: “I wanted you to know that many, many families around the world have been helped by what we have learned from your daughter.”

Out of the blue true healing, a way to understand, a reason for joy. Healing maybe but joy? No, they could never have imagined joy.

Dr. Linehan later described the experience of calling the Newkirks.

“I told a colleague ‘who knows, it’s been 28 years.’ The home number I called was disconnected. I had a work number and when I called a woman said, ‘Newkirk’s Barbershop’, and I almost fell off my chair. All three of us were crying on the phone.”

He indicated there is still much work to do in the treatment of TFE3 cancer, but confirmed there was a “direct correlation” between losing Karen and the rest of his career. “As long I am alive and here, this is what we’re working on,” he stated.

So far Proctor and Gamble has not formally pursued Jim’s invention, but he is hopeful and typically undeterred. But it is not the end all. To be sure, he still dreams of taking Donna to live at some swanky beachside resort, but the news they received that November has brought them a kind of peace that no windfall could ever do. No matter what may lie ahead it is certain the Newkirks will carry on, together.

Ray Donnelly lives in Cold Spring with his wife and three children. He works for IBM Corporation in downtown Cincinnati and is a very happy Newkirk Barbershop customer.