Person of the Month: Jim Francis, Tipp City Barber

“People…if you don’t like people, it’s a poor, poor job to be in. I enjoy the people. I’m very grateful. My customers fed me, educated me, entertained me, and humored me. Most of my customers, you know, I feel like they’re my friends. If I retired, I wouldn’t see a lot of these people, and I’d miss them.”

So began my interview with Jim Francis, barber. Francis Barbershop is in downtown Tipp City at the southwest corner of Main and Second Streets. Jim says he likes that his shop is “open,” just one big room. “You get everyone talking…it’s an education.”

Jim was born in what became Madden Park in West Dayton, then moved to the village of Clayton in 1954, where he delivered papers and worked at nearby Deter Nurseries. After High School, he went to Dayton Barber College during the day and worked at a gas station in the evening.

I asked Jim, “Why did you want to be a barber?” He replied, “My brother was a barber, and my father was a barber, it was just something you did.”

Jim says “his first cut hair” in July 1965, in a Centerville shop during the summer. He then barbered in Englewood, on North Main St. in Dayton (where he could still see the abandoned roller coaster from Frankie’s Forest Park), Vandalia, and 13 years in Kettering (where he cut the hair of WHIO’s Don Wayne). In 1981 he moved to Tipp City when his father retired.

Jim says “I’ve never been out of work since barber school, and I’ve always enjoyed doing this. I’ve always said I’d never work any place I didn’t enjoy. I’ve never dreaded going to work cutting hair.”

Jim then described a customer with a “flattop” who sat down in the barber chair. Jim began cutting his hair and during their conversation, the customer mentioned he was letting his hair grow out. Jim replied, “You mean the next time.” Jim also carved the word “Hockey” on the back of a customer’s hair, and chopped the dreadlocks off another.

I asked Jim what he did in his spare time, and he said he loves playing golf and fishing. I asked if he was a good golfer. Jim replied, “Terrible! I played the game for two years before I found out it wasn’t called ‘Oh Sh*T!’” But due to having both hips replaced, Jim doesn’t play golf anymore.

Jim finished by saying, “Tipp’s a good town, a friendly town. Tipp’s been good to me and my dad.” Jim and his wife raised two daughters in Tipp, and he has 11 grandkids and two great-granddaughters, and now has two stepchildren as well.

It was in Tipp that he tasted his first pizza, from DJ’s Pizza Alley (he thinks it cost a buck and a quarter). So, if you’d like some good conversation and a chance to meet new friends, visit the Francis Barbershop.

You might even want to get a haircut.