100 years and cutting for Busy Bee Barber Shop in Glen Ellyn

Like he has every few weeks for the past 74 years, Bill Gooch walked into the Busy Bee Barber Shop in Glen Ellyn on a recent Tuesday morning and sat down for a haircut and some camaraderie.

Seventy. Four. Years.

The 100-year-old shop’s longest continuous customer got his first haircut there in 1948 when he was 12 years old. Now 86, Gooch’s head of hair is just as full and he’s as loyal as ever.

“I must enjoy getting hurt, I think,” he said with a laugh as shop owner Joe Etheridge trimmed his silver mane with clippers and a comb.

There’s no shortage of good-natured ribbing at the Busy Bee.

“The truth is, I come back because they’re close friends and I get the best haircut of anywhere I’ve ever been to in the United States,” Gooch said.

Gooch and his wife spend their winters in Florida. He said they scheduled their departure date specifically so he could get one last haircut with Etheridge before heading south.

“The people down there butcher my hair,” Gooch said. “Joe fixes it.”

Customers such as Gooch have been coming back again and again now for a century, making the Main Street mainstay if not the oldest business downtown, definitely the oldest continuously named business.

“It’s a big part of the town, and the town is a big part of us,” Etheridge said.

Etheridge, 77, is just the fifth owner in the shop’s 100-year history. He started there as a barber in 1976, was later a partner and then took over as sole owner in 1982.

The decor is classic, old-school barber shop – an homage to both the past and the current town. Local sports memorabilia from the past decades adorns the walls, and so do more than 100 current team photos from the park district’s baseball program.

They change the photos out every year and Etheridge said they have 40-plus years worth of photos down in the basement.

“Kids come in, show their moms and look for their buddies,” Etheridge said. “And they trash talk about their friends. It’s fun. That’s why we do it.”

Etheridge and his cohorts, fellow barbers Jim Burke and Norm Tolle, have worked together since the 1970s. They’ve cut the hair of generations of families in Glen Ellyn, doing about 15,000 haircuts a year.

One chair over from Gooch, Steve Nelson of Glen Ellyn was getting a haircut from Tolle while they caught up on the happenings in each other’s lives. Nelson has been a customer of the Busy Bee for 47 years.

Nelson said if you count his father-in-law, which everyone there decided they should, four generations of his family have been barbered at the Busy Bee.

“All three of my boys came here and now their kids come here,” Nelson said. “This place is part of the town. If you live in Glen Ellyn, you get your hair cut at the Busy Bee.”

The shop actually may be more than 100 years old. Etheridge has heard stories of a Main Street Barber Shop in the same location of the original Busy Bee a few doors up the street. He knows for sure that Tommy Williams bought the place and named it the Busy Bee in 1922.

In honor of their 100th anniversary, they had T-shirts made that say “100 years of great customers.”

“When it first went to the printer, he wanted to put ‘100 years of great haircuts,’” Etheridge said. “I told him the haircuts really have nothing to do with this. It’s all about the customers.”

The connection to their customers and the community is what makes Busy Bee special, Tolle said.

“We can’t be like the chains and have employees coming and going and be open seven days a week and things like that. It’s just a different deal for us,” he said. “But I think our customers like the fact that we’ve been here a while and they know we’re gonna be here.”

Tolle is the youngster of the trio of barbers at 64. While they all enjoy talking high school sports, Tolle is the acknowledged resident expert. He proudly displays a signed basketball and volleyball from championship teams at his station.

There’s rarely a Friday night during football season when you don’t find him at a game in the area. And if there’s a game on Saturday, you’ll see him there, too. He said he missed only three of 37 Glenbard West basketball games last year.

“If you gave me a choice of watching the Bears or the Bulls or them [high school games], I’ll go watch the kids every time,” Tolle said. “I just like it better.”

Athletes whose hair he cut back in the day now come in and are parents of high school athletes.

“We always know somebody on the teams and we’re always pulling for them,” Tolle said.

While the hairstyles have changed who knows how many times over the years, the essence of the Busy Bee is decidedly familiar to its loyal customers, a few of whom are over 100 years old.

Etheridge said those customers are the reason he enjoys coming to work every day.

“It’s been a really good run,” Etheridge said. “I don’t have any plans to get out of it yet.”

When he does, he said it’s going to take the right person for him to pass the business along to its next owner.

“One of these days somebody will come along and want it,” Etheridge said. “But I’m not going to sell it to someone we don’t like. They’ve got to be good for Glen Ellyn or I don’t want anything to do with them.”

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