Johnny Gunn's Barbershop

He sits perfectly straight, perched on his stool in the corner of the barbershop. Like a bird on a wire watching for prey, he’s waiting on his next customer. With his tanned arms crossed over his chest, he stares vacantly through the acrylic letters painted on the large window that reads “Johnny Gunn’s Barbershop.”

It’s lunchtime and the crowd has finally slowed. He seems lonely when he’s not cutting hair. The ceiling fan clicks overhead, and a small tuft of hair blows across the black-and-white checkered floor and lands under the church pews in the waiting area.

“This is all I ever wanted to do,” he says quietly.

Johnny Gunn is known by everyone in Habersham County, Georgia. For 50 years, they’ve trusted him with their hair. They trust him with their small-town gossip. They trust him with their secrets. He knows more about them than he probably should, but they don’t really know about him.

Many of his customers don’t know why he sits down to cut hair, they just give him grief about it. In fact, they don’t know that he designed this barbershop while lying in a hospital bed. They don’t know that his love of cutting hair saved his life.

Thirty years ago, Johnny was riding his motorcycle when he was struck head-on by a car. After 14 surgeries and 215 days in the hospital, he was left with two choices: he could stay in the hospital longer and try an experimental procedure that would possibly save his leg or he could have his leg amputated. He chose to have his left leg taken off.

“At that time, I began to look towards the future. I had a family--a wife and three children that I deeply loved and wanted to support. I really wanted to be a person that could make something out of himself, something that he would be proud of.”

Johnny began plotting his return from the hospital bed.

“I mentally designed the way I would come back and cut hair, and that was to design a way to sit down and do my work.”

He contracted help, and within months, Johnny had a raised platform that allowed him to be taller than his clients, even while sitting down. He decided to install salon chairs that would allow him to adjust the height with his right leg and counters that were close enough to have all of his utensils within arms reach.

“I’m lucky to be alive,” he says, shifting his weight. “I probably can keep up with most anybody. It’s never slowed me down.”

The door squeaks open and a smile floods across Johnny’s face. A little boy and his father enter the barbershop. Johnny stands up to greet them, bracing himself against the counter. The boy hops in the chair and rolls his eyes when Johnny asks about his girlfriends. Johnny drapes the shawl around the little boy and flips a switch on the clippers, releasing a monotone buzz throughout the shop. With that, Johnny is lost in his world again, cutting hair. This is where he is happiest.

“I love children – I’m crazy about them,” he says later. His barbershop has been closed for almost an hour, but he’s still busy cleaning up for the following day. “A lot of them, I’ve given them their first haircut, they grow up and get married. To watch them grow up…it’s just a lot of fun.”

Johnny had three children of his own, two girls and one boy. He walks over to their photographs, which are proudly displayed on the mantel of the fireplace in the heart of the barbershop. He stops at a picture of his two daughters laughing and hugging each other and hesitates. “We lost both of them,” he says softly.

Johnny talks about the death of his daughters with an intense stare, as if he’s trying to remember every detail, every line on their face or the sound of their laugh. His eldest daughter died unexpectedly only three years ago due to complications from surgery. “She died in her momma’s arms,” he says.

Johnny says his faith and his profession are ultimately what brought him through the death of his daughters. He poured himself into his work and continued to look towards the future, just as he did the day he lost his leg.

At 66 years old, he spends every day doing what he loves most: cutting hair. A wide smile stretches across his face. "I’d rather do this than eat a big steak when I’m hungry,” he laughs.

Johnny’s not one to feel sorry for himself. He doesn’t wake up every morning wishing he had his left leg; he just thanks God that he’s alive. He misses his daughters each moment of his life, but he’s thankful for the precious time he had with them.

“I’ve really been blessed. I’m just so thankful and I give God the credit for it. I’ve been a blessed man.”