A CUT ABOVE
Duce Talley is making Star Spencer better one haircut at a time
MIDWEST CITY — Duce Talley surveyed the barbershop from his corner chair. Clippers and conversations buzzed as a morning episode of ESPN’s First Take screamed from a big screen in the corner. It was a lively day. But it will pale in comparison to how the shop will be Sunday.
That’s when Talley and his Twice the Cutz salon will host the Back 2 School Faded and Educated Free Haircut Day. Yes, there will be free haircuts, but there will also be free school supplies, backpacks and uniforms. There will be free food and games for the kids.
Hundreds of families will be helped.
“A whole community event is what it is,” Talley said. “It’s grown into something amazing.” That it has. At a time when everyone
is desperately searching for ways to bring communities together, Duce Talley has a proven method. You care. You love. You do whatever you can. It’s the example set by his parents and grandparents before him.
They did for the Spencer community, so Talley does, too.
*** Duce Talley is as Spencer as they come.
His mom, Diane, is a Love, and his dad, Henry, is a Talley. Those two families have long and deep roots in Spencer, the tiny community 15 minutes east of the state capitol but a world away from the city’s hustle and bustle.
“We’re all things Spencer,” Duce said.
Born Henry Talley II, Duce went to Green Pasture Elementary, Rogers Middle School, then Star Spencer High. Sports were always important in his life, but wrestling became his thing. He stood on the medal podium at state each of his last two years of high school.
When Talley graduated in 1993, he wasn’t sure that he’d return to Spencer. He always knew he’d stay involved, though. He wanted to help the community because that’s what he’d always seen his family do.
His grandfather was a church deacon, and whenever there was a need, he’d help meet it. Might mean giving money. Or clothes. Or food. His grandmother was always making up extra meals for someone who needed a hand.
That giving spirit trickled down to Talley’s mom and dad, too.
Their acts of kindness were never broadcast.
“A lot of people didn’t know about it,” said Talley, whose beard is sprinkled with bits of gray, “but we saw it.”
It impressed upon Talley the importance of offering to help in any way he could. What he was able do might not seem like much to him, but to someone else, it might mean everything.
So, when Talley and wife, Ayana, also a Star Spencer alum, decided to move back to town after living for a bit in Edmond, they began looking for ways to help. Talley was working as a barber, and when he bought out the salon and made it his own in 2003, he immediately knew he wanted to do a back-to-school event.
He’d watched moms and dads bring in their kids for haircuts before school started, and with some having three or four kids, he’d noticed how tough it was to fork over $40 or $50 for all those cuts.
Why not offer a day of free ones?
He had no way of knowing what it would become.
*** Families flocked to the barbershop that first year, and more have flocked every year since. They come from nearby — a vast majority of the boys who get haircuts go to schools in Spencer — but they also come from Oklahoma City and Shawnee and beyond.
Last year, more than 250 kids got haircuts.
The number of participants isn’t the only thing that’s grown. Other salons send barbers. The Urban League got involved. So did the Sigma Sigma Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and the Spencer Cougars Youth League and churches and teams and all sorts of individuals from the community.
Tuesday morning, Talley looked out the window by his chair and saw a woman pop open the trunk of her car. She started carrying in boxes of notebook paper.
Supplies fill a room next to the barbershop. There are pants on a table and shirts on a rack for uniforms. There are backpacks under a table. There are boxes of books and all sorts of other supplies that will be handed out Sunday.
“Everything,” Talley said as he looked around, “will be gone.”
And he knows they will run out before every need is filled.
When the barbers get there Sunday at 7 a.m., people will already be in the parking lot lining up. By the time they flip on their clippers at 8 a.m., the signup sheet will already have a hundred names or more. Even though 10 barbers will be cutting — “We only have eight chairs, so we’ll set up a table in the back,” Talley said — there may be kids who get turned away because they just can’t do any more.
Talley has dreams of one day moving the event to the Cox Convention Center.
“My vision is to be able to bus the kids from different locations,” he said, adding that he’d like to have enough barbers to provide haircuts for thousands of kids.
But for now, they have a goal of serving 350 kids on Sunday. They’ll do what they can for as many as they can.
After all, Talley has seen the way kids look when they leave the shop, their hair cut and their new backpack on. Their shoulders are back. Their chests are out. Their heads are high. And the smiles? Those are the best. What the Talleys are doing resonates. Men from the community come to volunteer, not only on free haircut day but also throughout the year in the mentoring and tutoring programs that Duce and Ayana have set up through their non-profit foundation. Some of those men were even recipients of a free haircut and free backpack once upon a time. They come back to help wash hair or distribute supplies or serve lunch on Sunday.
They learned the lesson that Duce Talley learned from generations of his family.
“It’s crazy,” he said, “because we’ve created a culture of giving back.” He swallowed hard. “I got tears in my eyes saying that.”
Seems that lessons are being learned before school ever starts.