Feature story: Raymond Ledford reflects on 66 years of cutting local hair
Plus, an update on the impressive college career of Tuti Jones … local soccer team finishes 2nd in state … and ‘This Week in Troy athletics.’
By BILL RICE, Jr.
When I re-booted The Troy Citizen, I made a list of human-interest feature stories I wanted to write. High on this list was a story on the life and times of Raymond Ledford, who has no doubt cut more heads of hair and perhaps got to know more local residents than any other Trojan.
Saturday morning I needed to get my ears lowered so I went to see Raymond and decided to kill two birds with one stone by doing my interview while I got my hair cut.
Our conversation was so interesting I moved to the next chair and continued my interview while Raymond moved onto his next customer (perhaps the 400,000th head of hair he’s cut in his life).
Here’s what I learned …
Raymond Ledford, Sr. moved to Troy in August, 1952 when he was 8-years-old. He had previously lived in Morris, Alabama near Gardendale, but state human services officials decided he should live at the Alabama Baptist Children’s Home as both his parents suffered from alcoholism.
Raymond told me several people have told him, “Oh, you are a poor orphan boy. This must have been a terrible development in your life.”
Not so, says Raymond, who will soon turn 82. This was actually the best thing that ever happened to him.
Raymond loved living at the Children’s Home and, in fact, two of his older brothers were already residents when he and his brother Leon (aka“Fuzz”) moved to Troy.
“Ninety-nine percent” of Raymond’s memories of living at the Home are happy, Raymond told me. The one percent that are not are when he got into trouble.
“About every three weeks I had to get a little mud on me,” explained Raymond.
Raymond remembers living with approximately 200 other children at the Children’s Home, which had more cottages than one sees today at “Sorority Hill” on Elm Street. He also remembers Elm Street and North Three Notch Street being “a lot more shady” back then.
When not doing chores, children had time to roam around Troy and hunt, fish and play sports on the grounds. Every time First Baptist Church opened its doors, one section of the sanctuary was full of Children’s Home residents, Raymond said.
Raymond learned to cut hair at the Children’s Home. His teacher was his life-long great friend and fellow Home resident Robert Earl Smith. But nobody remembers Robert by that name. The name we remember is “Pale,” who manned the barber’s chair next to Raymond - first at Byrd’s and then at Raymond’s - for five-plus decades.
Raymond told me how Pale got his name …
One day, Robert and a fellow Home child named Frank went to the Pike Theatre to see the Bob Hope-Jane Russell movie “Son of Paleface.”
Robert Smith had given his friend the nickname “HopAlong” (Cassidy) because Pale’s friend had experienced childhood polio and one leg was shorter than the other.
The friend, who thought turn-about was fair play, started calling Robert “Pale Face,” which quickly became … Pale.
Pale was two years older than Raymond and one of his jobs was cutting the hair of a couple dozen Home children every Saturday morning. This was a lucrative enterprise as the teenage barbers made $2.50 every Saturday.
One day, Pale told Raymond that Pale was going to start cutting hair for Junior Byrd and so the Home would need a new barber if Raymond was interested in the job.
He was. Raymond remembers he watched Pale cut hair for two hours on consecutive Saturdays. On the third Saturday, after one hour of observation, Pale handed the clippers to Raymond and said, “Now you do it.”
Thus Raymond Ledford’s formal cosmetology training was completed in five hours.
Raymond was 14 - circa 1958 - when he first started making an income from cutting hair, which means Raymond has been cutting hair for at least 66 years.
Raymond graduated from CHHS in 1962 and immediately went to work for Junior Byrd (who was himself one of Troy’s more colorful characters and the main barber of Pike County for decades).
The price of a flat-top immediately went up 25 cents …
Raymond remembers exactly how much haircuts cost in 1962 because Junior changed the prices a few days after he hired Raymond to man one of his six barber chairs.
The price was 75 cents for a regular haircut and $1.00 for a “flat-top,” which most men and boys got back then. Junior upped the price of both cuts by 25 cents.
Raymond says Junior was a good boss who taught him some valuable straight razor techniques.
Raymond told me he cut hair for Byrd for 18 years, but my math says it might have been 14 years because Raymond started his own business in 1976.
Before he went out on his own, Raymond met his future wife, Cherry, after taking a break between haircuts at Junior’s.
In the 1960s, Byrd’s barber shop was downtown near the then Western Auto.
One afternoon in 1965, Raymond glanced up Elm Street and saw a “beautiful young woman with long blond hair in a blue dress,” standing outside her place of employment, the O.K Loan Company.
“Boy, that’s a pretty girl. I need to go flirt with her,” Raymond told himself.
Which is what he did when he saw this angel in a blue dress go to City Drugs. Raymond followed and commenced his flirting over - appropriately enough - a Cherry Coke.
Cherry, who grew up in Union Springs, later drove by Byrd’s in a 1957 Chevy. Raymond stuck out his thumb and, sure enough, the car stopped and picked him up.
By the end of the car ride, he’d made his first date and the couple were married six weeks later!
No scissors required …
I learned that Raymond has never done “scissor” haircuts. Almost every haircut he’s done has been with clippers.
On some Saturdays at Junior Byrd’s he probably cut 40 to 45 heads of hair.
“We stayed busy,” he said.
Not only did most Troy men come to Junior Byrd’s for their haircuts, the clientele came from Brundidge, Elba, Enterprise, etc.
As Junior’s best-known barber, it made sense that Raymond might want to start his own barber shop.
However, Junior told him he would never be able to afford the rent for a new building. While he and Junior always remained “good friends,” Raymond didn’t believe this.
As he told Pale, “If we can’t find enough customers to make a living cutting hair by now we need to go become police men or something.”
Raymond found the perfect spot for a new barber’s shop on South Brundidge Street across from the new post office.
The building was owned by Frank Vinson and, later for decades, by Mr. Vinson’s late son, Jerry Vinson. The building had been Bush’s Fabric Shop for about five years but had been unoccupied for about 11 months when Raymond asked the elder Vinson if he could rent the building.
Mr. Vinson told him definitely and that he would do anything he could to help Raymond be successful.
Ledford got two loans totaling $10,000 from Pike County Bank and Troy Bank & Trust to start his business. Raymond’s Style Shop was an instant success. As it turned out, Raymond had no problem making the $250 monthly rent payment.
Raymond, like Junior before him, soon had five other barbers cutting hair, including Pale who joined his friend a year later and became a fixture in the first chair for almost five decades until he passed away in 2017.
Today, Raymond is still cutting hair almost every day except Sunday or when he takes off to go fishing or hunting, two of his life-long passions - as the mounted bass and deer heads in his shop reveal.
Hunting and fishing stories - along with sports commentaries and vignettes about local characters - probably comprise the vast majority of barber shop conversations.
Raymond says he has now cut the hair of “three or four” generations of local residents.
The price of a haircut, now $15, has soared into the stratosphere, although this is far cheaper than the price at probably 99 percent of barber shops in the country.
Changes in hair style trends …
Trends in hair style have changed through the years. When Raymond started out, most males got a crew cut or flat-top and made a trip to the barber every few weeks. Probably as an inflation work-around, this is no longer the case.
In the late 1960s through the early part of the 1970s, Raymond did business in the “hippy” era where young adults liked their hair very long.
Raymond remembers some younger males who might get one or two haircuts a year. This was fine with him as long as this customer got his annual haircut from his style shop.
“I wasn’t going to insult anyone” about how few haircuts they got, said Raymond.
The perfect job in the perfect town …
Raymond said he hopes to still be cutting hair when he’s 102 and, if this is not possible, he’ll be in Heaven looking down on a town he grew to love.
“Every day, I thank the Lord that I’ve lived almost all my life in this little town,” he said, adding Troy is a town “full of good people … I’m a Troy boy. Troy is my town.”
He also says he’s a people person and he found a job where he could talk to and become friends with almost every family in town.
And Raymond doesn’t have to worry about paying rent anymore.
Jerry Vinson, who passed away in June 2023, became one of Raymond’s closest friends and would stop by the barber shop at least once every day.
When Jerry died, he bequeathed the building to Raymond for a small price and, as contracts say, “other considerations.”
Raymond wouldn’t tell me the price, but did confirm that it was less than the price of one haircut.
It’s hard to imagine Troy, Alabama without the ears of so many neighbors being lowered by Raymond Ledford, one of the all-time great Trojans!
*** (Thanks for sharing Troy Citizen original content!) ***
UPDATE: Tuti Jones is finishing a stellar career at Belmont
By BILL RICE, JR.
When I read that former CHHS standout Tuti Jones had recently been honored for scoring 1,000 points at Belmont University in Tennessee, I decided to do a little more research on Tuti’s exceptional college career.
What I learned:
* Tuti has started for five consecutive seasons for the Belmont Bruins, who are one of the top Mid-Major programs in the country.
* In addition to scoring more than 1,000 points in her career, Tuti holds the school’s record for steals in a career (now 275 and growing).
* Tuti was first-team all conference in the Ohio Valley Conference in 2021-2022 and was second team pre-season all-conference in the Missouri Valley Conference before the start of this season.
* Tuti was also named the “Defensive Player of the Year” in the OVC after her sophomore season at Belmont.
* According to the Sports Information Department at Belmont, as a sophomore Tuti was “the only player in the nation to average over 10.0 points, 4.0 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 2.5 steals while shooting over 40 percent from beyond the arc.”
* Tuti only played eight games in 2022-2023 before suffering a season-ending injury in a game against Georgia Tech. However, she came back to start every game last season for a team that finished the year 26-9 and is now playing in her redshirt senior season.
* She was named the MVC “Player of the Week” late in the season last year. This press release from March 2024 shows that Tuti was certainly deserving of this honor:
“Redshirt junior guard Tuti Jones had quite the Saturday afternoon in Normal, Illinois, reaching 1,000 career points, scoring a season-high 25 and knocking down the game winner from distance. A perfect 7-for-7 from beyond the arc, Jones hit a deep wing three-pointer with three seconds left to lift Belmont over host Illinois State.”
For her career, Tuti has averaged about 10 points per game although she might be better known for her defensive prowess.
Belmont almost upset Ohio State Sunday …
Belmont looks to be a strong contender to make the NCAA Division I tournament and win the MVC title. While the Bruins are 2-2, their most recent loss (on Sunday) was to No. 12 Ohio State 67-63.
In that game, Belmont led 59-50 with 5:21 left in the game before the Buckeyes rallied to avert the upset.
Against Ohio State, Tuti played 35 minutes and led her team in rebounds (6) and steals (3) while scoring five points and adding two assists.
Tuti has already graduated with a degree in Sports Management and, according to her media guide bio, plans to follow her mother’s footsteps and become a basketball coach when her playing career has concluded.
Tuti put CHHS girls basketball on the map …
At CHHS, Tuti might have been overshadowed by blue-chip center Maori Davenport, but Jones probably did more to make CHHS ladies basketball a state powerhouse.
In her senior year at CHHS, playing for her mother Dyneshia Jones-Elder, Tuti led CHHS to a perfect 29-0 record and a state championship.
CHHS was also the Class 5A state runner-up in 2017, and captured the state title in 2018 and reached the state finals her junior year.
Tuti was Named Alabama Sports Writers Association Class 5A All-State First Team in 2019 and garnered ASWA Super All-State honors in 2020.
In other words, Tuti Jones has been a star and fan favorite in college just like she was in high school. In fact, Tuti Jones has put together one of the most impressive college sports careers of any previous CHHS athlete.
Good luck to Tuti and Belmont the rest of this season.
Local soccer teams win two state titles and finish as runner-up in four more age categories!
I’d never watched much youth soccer until my children played the sport a couple of seasons. That was enough soccer viewing for even this non-expert to see that Troy had many talented youth soccer players running up and down Sportsplex fields.
With this background, I wasn’t surprised to receive this update on a local youth soccer teams that either won state titles or finished as state runner-up at recent state tournaments.
Thank you to David Dickey of the Troy Parks and Recreation Department for providing me the names of these all-star soccer teams. This is impressive. Congratulations to all these fine athletes!
12U Girls - State Champions!
Adlyn Allen, Rilee Felch, Kirsten Gailes, Harper Gordon, Lila Joachim, Harper Little, Caroline Murphy, Mary Pennington, Ella Rhodes, Skileigh Sharp, Emme Slay, Jenna Vaughan. Coaches Brent Rhodes, Joe Murphy and Michael Slay.
19U Boys - State Champions!
Jealin Atwell, Jack Burttram, Cruz Cueyactle, Jesus Gutierrez, Sam Kreis, Howell Leverette, Robert Lawrence Lindsey, Dunn Lindsey, Cade May, Carter May, Jacob Meadows, Jahao De La Rosa, Kaden Simmons, Allen Tomas Solis, Christian Sutherland, Jose Tzitzihua. Coaches Doug McLendon, Baylor Barnes, Jaron Knox and Jaylen Hall
8U Girls - Runner Ups
Sawyer Blair, Claire Dixon, Lakynn Gordon, Libby Paul, Emerson Rhodes, Ansley Starling, Birdy Stephens, Zoe Sutherland, Mary Thomas Weed, Caroline Yarbrough, Coaches Jonathan Blair, Will Starling, Troy Weed.
10U Girls - Runner Ups:
Cate Barron, Kennedy Bell, Brooklyn Brown, Baxley Holmes, Dara Joachim, Taylor Johnson, Finlay Jordan, Maria Cueyactle, Emri Ramirez, Za’Laiya Reynolds, Emmerson West. Coaches Derrick Bell and Charles Jordan.
12U Boys - Runner Ups
Cayden Allums, Felix Arellano, Bryant Barron, Brooks Boyles, Gray Garner, Adien Horn, Nate Jennings, James Johnson, Johan Solis, Noah Stillwell, Santiago Valencia. Coaches Travis Jacques and Cole Garner.
14U Boys - Runner Ups (pictured above, no particular order):
Felix Arellano, Juan Arellano, Jadan Atwell, Troy Bolden, Joseph Drink-water, Jaxon Flowers, Currell Glenn, Wade Maddox, Wyatt Lindsey, James Wade Murphy, Tripp Royal, Patrick Slay, Christopher Vazquez, Will Yarbrough, Marcos Montealgre. Coaches Doug McLendon, Jaron Knox and Brady Barr.
According to Recreation Department director Dan Smith, “The City of Troy and Troy Parks and Recreation are proud of all the young men and women that represented our community so well.”
Troy’s Matthew Caldwell Named SBC
Offensive Player of the Week
Matthew Caldwell accounted for all four of Troy’s touchdowns on Saturday as the Trojans knocked off Sun Belt East Division leading Georgia Southern and has been named the SBC Offensive Player of the Week for his efforts, the league announced Monday.
A junior from Auburn, Caldwell completed 26-of-32 pass attempts for 288 yards and a pair of touchdown passes in addition to rushing 12 times for 13 net yards (35 positive yards before sacks) and two fourth quarter touchdowns.
He is the first Trojan this season with multiple rushing touchdowns in a game and the first Troy quarterback since Gunnar Watson at App State in 2022 with a pair of rushing touchdowns in a game.
Making his fourth start of the season, Caldwell engineered an efficient Troy offense that controlled the ball for 38:31 and converted 11-of-14 third-down attempts; Caldwell had his hand in 10 of the 11 third-down conversions either with his legs or his arm.
Troy travels to SBC West leader Louisiana on Saturday for its final road game of the season; kickoff between the Trojans and Cajuns is set for 4 p.m. The Trojans close out the season on Nov. 30 against Southern Miss at The Vet, which will be Senior Day and Judy Morgan Day.
This week in Troy University Athletics …
Monday, November 18:
6 – 7 p.m. – Trojan Talk at Baumhower’s Victory Grille
Prize drawings for fans on hand from Troy Sports Properties
Fans in attendance will be able to enjoy food and drink specials
Fans that wish to call into the show may call 844-GO-4-TROY (464-8769)
Show broadcast on the Troy Sports Media Network and will also have a viewing option available via the Troy Athletics YouTube page.
7 p.m. – Women’s Basketball at #7 LSU in Baton Rouge.
TV: SEC Network+
Radio: Troy Sports Media Network
Tuesday, November 19:
6 p.m. – Men’s Basketball at West Georgia in Carrollton, Ga.
Radio: Troy Sports Media Network
Thursday, November 20:
1:30 p.m. – Volleyball vs. Georgia State in Foley, Ala.
TV: ESPN+
First Round of SBC Volleyball Tournament
Friday, November 22:
10:45 a.m. – 3rd Annual Skylar Meade Golf Classic at Troy Country Club
Lunch begins at 10:45 a.m. with a shotgun start at 11:30 a.m.
Please register in advance by visiting www.TroyTrojans.com/Tickets
All proceeds benefit the Troy Baseball program
10:30 p.m. – Women’s Basketball AT Alaska-Anchorage Great Alaska Shootout
Radio: Troy Sports Media Network
Saturday, November 23:
4 p.m. – Football at Louisiana in Lafayette, La.
* TV: ESPN+
Radio: Troy Sports Media Network
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Correction: Subscriber Blaine Stewart quickly informs me that Raymond's Barber and Style Shop is located on S. Brundidge Street NOT Three Notch Street. I've lived in Troy most of my life and I still get these two streets confused.
The good thing about Substack is you can quickly fix your errors ... Or share your favorite Raymond Ledford stories.
Great human interest stories Bill. Keep making Troy proud. Sad to say my hair is thinning and my beloved won’t let me get a Flat Top.