Butler-area barber bowing out after 70-year career
CENTER TWP — Angela Murrman has only had her hair cut by one person. It’s the same person who, she said, never missed a football game, a band concert or extracurricular activity of hers when she was growing up.
And even though her barber, Bob Traggiai, is retiring, she thinks she can still get an appointment. She just has to visit her dad’s house.
“My dad has always done it,” Murrman said. “He was able to work around our schedules as kids … He was never one to miss a football game or a concert.”
Traggiai, 77, owns his own barber shop at 1734 N. Main St. in Center Township, where he has cut hair since 1982.
He first started cutting hair when he was 17 years old and worked at Christy’s barbershop in Butler Township. He went on to jump from vessel to vessel in the U.S. Navy to give sailors haircuts, and opened his own shop in 1982, where he maintained a regular customer base, giving up to 20 haircuts per day.
Even providing so many haircuts every day, Traggiai has never gotten tired of the profession. And his clients haven’t gotten tired of him either, as some of them, like his last customer on his last day Friday, Dec. 19, have been getting their hair cut by Traggiai since Day 1.
“My last customer is my first customer, Bob Mahaffey,” Traggiai said. “I started cutting his hair as a kid. I was doing fades before the were called fades. It was just a military cut.”
He lives in Cabot and travels to his shop every weekday, and said that while he is a little apprehensive to close the business, there are some perks of retirement he is looking forward to. This is, in part, because his wife, Irene Traggiai, is retiring alongside him — she took care of the financial aspects of the shop for most of the years it has been open. Like most of the events in his life, Traggiai met his wife through his work.
“I met her through the barbershop window,” Traggiai said. “I asked her out, and in 1970 we got married.”
Traggiai began his barbering career by attending a barber school in Pittsburgh, where he learned how to use tools like a straight razor and scissors, but also got a few lessons in anatomy.
“When you first got there, they taught you how to cut hair and use shaving cream out of a glass jug,” Traggiai said. “You had to learn about the nerves in the head and the layers of skin.
“You just went every day and practice.”
When he got his license to barber, a military recruiter told Traggiai to hide it in his personal effects. When he was deployed, an officer found his license and offered him the duty of being the unit’s barber. He deployed in 1968 and traveled on the USS McCaffery, giving haircuts along the way.
“It was the best thing I ever did,” Traggiai said of taking a barbering gig with the Navy.
Traggiai’s military habits didn’t leave him once he left the service in 1972. He continued to provide similar haircuts to clients, and to this day never stopped providing a full shave treatment to people with facial hair. He credits the shaving cream treatment with the personal touch that gets new customers to come back to his shop again and again.
“When you start putting the shaving cream on them they get comfortable and they always want to have it,” Traggiai said. “They stay for the shave.”
The number of people Traggiai has had an impact on over his years of barbering was evident Dec. 16 by the dozens of congratulatory retirement cards that populated his wardrobe, which itself houses numerous hair cutting artifacts dating back decades.
Traggiai said some of his longtime clients became emotional when he told them he was retiring. It’s because many have come to his shop regularly for decades to get their haircut treatment, and also catch up with a trusted friend.
“You become their friend,” Traggiai said. “Someone asked me how I can have so many conversations in one day. It’s like a confessional.”
When Traggiai opened his barbershop at 1734 N. Main St., his storefront window looked over a grassy field, instead of the roads and housing plan it currently overlooks. He watched as residences sprung up around the shop, and more businesses opened up and down Route 8 in Butler and Center townships.
Murrman said there are people she has known her whole life simply because her dad cut their hair. She explained that her dad’s clients would eventually bring their children to the shop for a cut, and those children would eventually bring children of their own to the barber.
“He actually told me the other day that some of his customers he had straight out of barber school, he still cuts their hair,” Murrman said. “If they got to the point where they couldn't get out anymore he would always go to them, he would go to nursing homes for them.”
The clients who have stuck with Traggiai all these years aren’t being left barber-less by his retirement. He plans to continue giving haircuts to people who couldn’t make it to another barber as long as he is able.
“There’s no one who goes to see them,” Traggiai said. “The shut-ins I’m still going to do. I can’t just let them go.”
Traggiai was also one of the last people to see certain customers once they died, Murrman said. She added that it’s because the people whose hair Traggiai cut were not just customers.
“He's actually even styled their hair when they pass away,” Murrman said. “It is still difficult, because he loves it. It's the social aspect of it too, they're not just his customers.”
Traggiai doesn’t have any immediate plans for retirement, but said he and his wife enjoy camping, which is an activity they will get to do more of when they are not working. Additionally, the couple’s display of Christmas collectibles, which they started putting up during the holidays in the 1990s, is still growing every year.
The Traggiais bought their first Department 56 model houses at the now-defunct America's First Christmas Store in Smethport, and the display they set up now has more than 100 pieces.
“That keeps us busy,” Traggiai said.
