Jamboree set for Sept. 10-11

Comment by RedShannon: Tuesday, September 7

The Jessamine Jamboree has been and always will be a trashy operation. There are no REAL crafts off...read more...

Fiscal court buys Nicholasville Cafe building

Comment by RedShannon: Tuesday, September 7

That restaurant is NEVER open when you think it will be. Mrs. Deeken is rude to guests, and so is M...read more...

Stanford man arrested on burglary charges

Comment by JohnT: Tuesday, September 7

I am also responding to the online jailer poll. I do not believe my vote was counted either. I vot...read more...

» Read more recent story comments
» Register for your account

It’s hard not to feel at home when you walk into Jessamine Hairstyling in Nicholasville. The mood in the recently renovated business is not one of merchants and customers but of friends and family — with good reason. Stylists Marilyn Welch and her daughter Kelly Combs are the two most recent links in a family chain of hairdressers that goes back four generations. They continue the tradition started by Marietta Hager, Welch’s grandmother and Combs’ great-grandmother, in the 1930s at Jessamine Beauty Shop at Main and Oak streets.

Hager ran the Nicholasville shop for several years at the site of the current Central Bank building before selling it and starting Hager Beauty School on Main Street in Lexington.

Vedis Reynolds, Hager’s daughter, was an instructor at the school, and her husband, Logan Reynolds, did the plumbing for the school as well as each future location of the family salon.

But when Hager decided to get out of teaching the business and get back into practicing it, she sold the school, moved back to Nicholasville and opened up another salon, where she and Vedis worked for years.

Two moves and three generations later, Welch and Combs continue the family business more than 70 years after it started. Welch said her choice to remain in the profession was rooted in her memories of growing up watching her mother (Reynolds) work.

“I don’t reckon I could have done anything else,” Welch said. “When you’re raised in a beauty shop, that’s all you know. Kelly (her daughter) is the same way.”

Combs said she initially insisted she would not work in a salon before realizing there was nothing she wanted to do more.

“When I was little, I used to say, ‘I’m never going to be a hairdresser — never, never, never,” she said. “I couldn’t stand that; everybody asked me. They do that to my daughter now.”

Combs said her daughter, 14-year-old Bailey Combs, gives a similar reply when she is asked the same question, although Welch said she thinks Bailey could end up carrying on the profession.

“I have a granddaughter, and I would not doubt that it will be five generations, and she’ll do it,” Welch said.

Vedis Reynolds, Welch’s mother, is now retired after about 45 years in the business. Welch has been styling hair for 43 years, and Combs for 24.

The third hairstylist currently working in the shop has been around even longer. Mickey Houp was working with the family when Combs was a little girl, and she still continues her 44-year career in the business at Jessamine Hairstyling.

The techniques and technology of the business have changed a lot since the days of Marietta Hager. Betty Gibbs, a customer of the family for more than 70 years, said she got her first perm from Hager in 1938 when she was 10 and Hager attached wires dangling from the ceiling to her hair and heated them to style her hair.

“My mom said when she was a girl, she would have to fan the customers because it got so hot,” Welch said.

But the business has never been about curls or machines as much as people. When Welch starts to recall the history of the shop, she doesn’t give a history of techniques; she rattles off names of hairstylists who worked with the family — Libby Burton, Louise Teator, Opal Davis, Dottie Bruner.

“We just made so many good friends through the years,” Welch said. “I think I’ve fired one person in 42 years. We’re still friends with all the hairdressers that opened their own shops — lasting friendships.”

One of those hairdressers works just a few steps away in a different shop. Debbie Hood owns The Hair Depot, which occupies the same building as Jessamine Hairstyling, but the two businesses don’t compete; Hood stopped by to have her hair colored on Jan. 21.

“She’s my best friend,” Welch said of Hood. “We share. We’re team players, all of us.”

The building sits on a 62-acre farm that has been in the family for five generations.

Welch and Combs both live on the farm, as does Vedis Reynolds, and they said that sometimes the farm life crosses over with the hair business.

When the business has lost electricity, Welch and Combs have improvised and made the most of the rural setting.

“When the lights are out, sometimes we take customers to the barn, set them on a bale of hay and cut their hair in the barn,” Welch said.

“If you’re halfway through, you can’t leave somebody with half a haircut,” Combs said.

Combs said she’s had to leave a customer before in the middle of a haircut because a mare was foaling.

“And the customers watch the shop,” Welch added.

The women said they love their jobs and that they can’t stand to be away from them.

“I enjoy my work,” Combs said. “It’s not like having a job. It’s fun.”

Both Combs and Welch said they have returned to work in two weeks for issues they were told to stay out much longer for — a knee replacement for Welch and a C-section for Combs.

And when Combs’ water broke when she was pregnant with her son, she only had one concern for the hospital staff.

“I can’t have this baby today,” she told them. “I’m booked.”

Gibbs, the customer of more than 70 years, said the shop is always a lively place to be.

“My husband always wants to know when I get home what went on at the salon today,” she said.

Story comments

No comments on this article yet.

Posting comments on this web site requires free registration.

• Create your account
• Log in to your account