By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

AKRON — Over her around 50 years of hairstyling, Ruby Bowers has seen many changes in the industry.

What hasn’t changed is her passion for the craft.

Ruby Bowers

Bowers, 70, will be celebrated for those many years of work in Akron’s Fourth of July parade this year. She will serve as co-grand marshal of the event, which begins at 11 a.m. Tuesday, July 4, and heads down Rochester and Mishawaka Streets.

Joining her will be fellow hairstylist Shirley Bickel, who, like Bowers, opened a beauty shop in Akron in 1973. The theme for the Fourth, “Take Me Back to the ’70s,” reflects the women’s start in the industry during that period.

Bowers, who’s originally from Akron and resides in Athens, said she’s styled hair from a really early age.

“My mom would come home sometimes, and my sister was about three years younger, and she’d have a different hairdo,” she said.

Bowers graduated from Akron High School, later heading to Rudae Beauty School in Logansport. She started there not too long after Bickel did.

Bowers had an internship for a time in Rochester before partnering with Pat Norman to open the Fashionette at 104 N. Mishawaka St., Akron, on Sept. 10, 1973.

Norman would leave “for other interests” after around 10 years, said Bowers.

“I bought her half out, then I had various girls work for me,” she said.

Currently working under Bowers are Ashley Prater and Lupe Hernandez. Prater’s worked there 20 years and Hernandez for about five years.

Bowers noted hairstyles differ than from when she first started.

“When I first came into the beauty shop, it was a Dorothy Hamill haircut and Farrah Fawcett (one),” she said. “And we always laughed because people with two hairs on their head usually wanted to look like Farrah Fawcett, but that was popular.”

“It was more roller sets when we first started,” Bowers added. “Then a curling iron came in, oh, in the late ’70s.”

The way in which she’s studied her craft has changed too.

“When we started, we went to a lot of beauty shows and classes,” she said, before adding she now goes to Google and YouTube to learn things.

Also having studied hairstyling on YouTube is Bowers’ youngest grandchild, Sydney Mills. Bowers said the high school senior is set to follow in her footsteps by attending beauty school.

Bowers said she’s “become friends with so many of my clients.”

She’s now styling the hair of some of their grandchildren.

“I’ve given a lot of people their first haircuts,” said Bowers.

“I’ve had little kids fall asleep when I cut their hair,” she said. “One little boy told me that he wasn’t coming back anymore. He’d rather go to (a nearby barber) because he had a TV and I didn’t.”

“A lot of my (clients) watched my kids grow up,” she said. “And when my kids still lived here, they watched my grandkids for the most part grow up.”

Bowers has been married to Mike Bowers for almost 52 years. They have two kids: Chrissy Mills and Ryan Bowers; and four grandchildren.

She’s been involved in the community, doing everything from allowing Akron Elementary School kids to take field trips to the shop to serving on the Fulton County Council for eight years, the first woman to do so.

Her and Mike’s activities include attending Tippecanoe Valley School Corp. sports events and plays and helping with Beaver Dam United Methodist Church’s Wheels on Fire-Cancer Crusaders.

Ruby and Mike were on the Akron Fourth of July committee in the 1980s, including at the time of Akron’s sesquicentennial in 1986. She commended the Fourth of July committee for all the work they do.

Ruby has been grand marshal once before, 10 years ago when she marked 40 years as a hairstylist.

The process of her being chosen this year with Bickel started during a conversation the two had while Ruby was doing Bickel’s hair.

“I said, ‘Shirley, we’ve got 100 years doing hair. We ought to have a float in the parade,’ and we laughed,” said Ruby. “Well, Ashley, she got wind of that, and she said, ‘No, we have to have a float.'”

Ruby chatted with Town Clerk-Treasurer Rebecca Hartzler, one of the festival’s organizers, about entering the parade and later suddenly learned she and Bickel were co-grand marshals.

One of her grandchildren called to say the family was coming to see her be grand marshal.

“And I said, ‘What?'” said Ruby.

Ruby and Bickel’s parade entry will have a 1970s and hairstyling-themed float. Mike will drive a ’70s VW Bus and sport a hairstyle similar to what he had back in that era.

She says she believes she’s never missed a Fourth of July celebration in Akron, “even from back when I was a kid.”

“It was something that we looked forward to because when you lived out in the country … you knew you were going to see your friends for the first time since school got out.”

“That’s when your family comes,” she added. “We’re going to have a huge picnic because my family’s all coming home because of this.”

Bowers is shown around the time of her graduation from Rudae Beauty School in Logansport. Photo provided.

Bowers, wearing a red shirt, is pictured in her beauty shop in Akron, the Fashionette, in 2002 with some Akron Elementary School students who were visiting on a field trip. Photo provided.

Bowers, left, is shown last year around Christmas in the shop with her two employees, Lupe Hernandez, center and Ashley Prater. Photo provided.