Barbering brothers hang up shears after 60 years
TRUMBULL — The sign outside the Long Hill Hair Stylists still promises “3 Barbers” but for the past few years, the Clericuzio brothers Tony, 77, and Nick, 81, have handled the cutting and styling as a duo. Their older brother, Phil, 85, retired a few years ago.
Now, Nick and Tony plan to follow Phil into retirement.
“I think, it’s time to move on, spend more time with the family,” said Nick, the older
and far more talkative of the two, as he stood inside the shop where he has worked since before a teenage Cassius Clay won his first pro fight. “I am going to miss this place, though.”
The Clericuzios have been barbering since they were grade school aged, which itself is something of a family tradition.
“Our father was working as a shoeshine boy near a barbershop in Barnum Avenue in Bridgeport when he was 9 years old,” Nick said.
By age 11, Rocco Clericuzio was learning to cut hair. After their father’s older brother died in World War I, the family moved to Italy where their father opened his own shop at age 13.
If 13 seems a bit young to be a business owner, Tony said, his father used to clarify that he was “thirteenand- a- half” when he opened his first shop.
Phil, Nick and Tony all were born in the Naples area, and followed their father into the family business, shaving customers with the traditional straight razor by the time they were 9 years old.
“I didn’t want to be a barber when I was a boy, but back then, you did what your father said,” Nick said. Asked what would have happened to a boy who disregarded his father’s wishes, Nick struggles with the very idea. “They probably would have put you in an institution or something.”
Rocco returned to the U. S. in 1955, and the brothers followed in 1958. By 1960, Tony and Phil were barbering in Bridgeport, and Nick had set up shop on Main Street in Trumbull, where he has remained ever since. Tony joined Nick at Long
Hill in 1973 and Phil ran his own business, the Merritt Barber Shop, until 2010.
Inside the shop, it still feels like it could be 1960. Although the scent of bay rum has dissipated during the two- month coronavirus required closing, there are tubs of Pinaud Clubman styling gel stacked in a pyramid in the display case. The barber chairs, where four generations of customers have gotten their haircuts, are still the originals.
“See this chair?” Nick said as he slapped the shiny leather chair back with a solid sounding thwack. “It’s over a hundred years old.”
Hairstyles, though, definitely have changed over the decades. Flat- tops and crew cuts gave way to moptops and sideburns and countless fads over the years, although the low- tight fade still remains popular, even among those, like one customer who is now 25 years and 6,600 miles away from his first trim.
“I remember when he came in for his first haircut, his mother thought I cut it too short,” Nick said picking up a folded and framed American Flag sent to the shop from a military pilot serving in Afghanistan. The pilot, a captain presumably still sporting a short cut, included a handwritten note saying he couldn’t wait to get back to Trumbull for a haircut.
Tony said that was how the shop had always operated.
“Our customers are like our family,” he said.
Ironically, though, it was the desire to spend more time with family that led the brothers to decide it was time to move on. In a statement posted on the shop’s Facebook page, the brothers said goodbye to their customers.
“It was a difficult decision, but after much thought and consideration, we realized now is the best time to move on,” they wrote. “With all heartfelt sincerity, thank you so much for your loyal patronage and support. We leave with many wonderful memories. We were blessed to have the best customers in the world!”
Nick said the COVID- 19 pandemic, which has forced the shop to remain closed since March 13, had given him a taste of what it will be like to be retired. But even with reduced responsibilities, his habit of rising early to open the shop at 6: 30 a. m. has proven hard to break.
“I still get up early, feeling like it’s time to come in,” he said. “That was always when we were busiest. If I got here at 6, people would be waiting.”
Still, even without Nick and Tony, it appears the shop itself could be around for another few generations of customers. A talented young haircutter eager to own his own shop will be running the place when it reopens.
“The young guy taking over, 23 years old,” Nick said. “A lot of people were interested in buying the place. But Chris ( the new owner) it turns out he went to school with my granddaughter. I met him, we talked. I told him, ‘ It’s yours.’”
“It was a difficult decision, but after much thought and consideration, we realized now is the best time to move on. With all heartfelt sincerity, thank you so much for your loyal patronage and support. We leave with many wonderful memories. We were blessed to have the best customers in the world.”
Nick and Tony Clericuzio