Thursday, February 6, 2025

LeRoy Fischer: A tribute to a 70-year career

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LeRoy Fischer holds a piece of barber shop history, an antique painted wooden barber shop pole. He stands in his barber shop surrounded by images of Elvis Presley. LeRoy has been an avid collector of Elvis memorabilia for many years and has showcased much of that collection in his shop. Tina L. Scott photo.

TINA L. SCOTT
EDITOR

Last week LeRoy Fischer - barber to generations of Merrill residents and customers who’ve traveled far and wide to have him give them a shave and a haircut over the years - hung up his clippers and shears and officially began his retirement. He did so with his ever-ready smile for anyone who was watching, but there’s more than a small chance there were tears in his eyes at the same time. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was one that’s been a while in coming, as LeRoy has faced increasing health and mobility challenges over the last year. “Due to health issues, I’ve had to make a serious decision,” LeRoy said. “I will have to give up barbering as of July 1st. I’ve enjoyed this part of my life so much; it will be hard to do.”
Many years ago when the Merrill Foto News did an article about LeRoy’s career, he had commented, “It’s really the customers and the people I’ve met over the years that keep me busy and coming back to the shop every day … That’s the one thing I can say that has never changed over the years, how much fun I have with my customers … When I don’t have fun anymore, that will be the day I retire.”
The customers are still what makes LeRoy smile and even tear up a little. They’ve put the fun in barbering all these years, but the physical challenges of the last year have put a damper on LeRoy’s fun, making it difficult to do what he’s done for so many years with joy and ease. “My scissors are dull,” LeRoy quipped with a sad smile. He said that’s how his family suggested he put it. But in truth, it’s really just the aches and pains of age and surgeries and a body that won’t cooperate with LeRoy’s spirit that led to his tough decision. And, it’s time he spent more time with his wife and family, LeRoy added. “Thanks to my wife Connie for what she has done to help me with cleaning and decorating. She has been supportive for the last 40 years. to my family for putting up with long hours and missing some family gatherings,” he said. They’ve put up with the phone ringing every day of the week at all hours for appointments for all these years. Now it’s time to quiet the phone and spend more time with family,
Connie and LeRoy met at a wedding and hit it off. They were married Sept. 14, 1990, and will soon celebrate 34 years of marriage. Between them they had nine children (Connie had five and LeRoy had four, from their previous marriages) and now they have more than a dozen grandchildren between them. While most live in the area or at least in Wisconsin, one of Connie’s children is in Montana, and they’d like to do some visiting.

At his barber shop, LeRoy Fischer cuts a customer's hair. He will miss barbering but most of all, all the friends he's made over the year and the fun he's had with them. If the walls of his shop could talk, they'd speak of years of laughter, all the people he's met, and decades of Merrill history. Tina L. Scott photo.

A 70-year career

What was to become LeRoy’s lifelong career as an old-school barber began in the summer of 1954. “Elvis Presley days,” LeRoy said. He recounts the story of how he was 12 years old working at the Mobil station at 1300 W. Main St. in Merrill’s sixth ward. “The owner, Leonard Bergh, was a good friend of my dad’s who had lost his leg in the war,” he said. “He needed some help around the shop, so my dad sent me over to lend a hand. My main job was pumping gas and washing windows. Back in those days you didn’t just pump someone’s gas and send ‘em on their way. Washing their windows was part of the deal. I was a bit small for my age, so I had to stand on cases of pop to reach the windows,” he said.
At that time the Sixth Ward Barber Shop was located next door. “Bill owned the shop and had a few other barbers working for him. He and ‘Schmidty’ would stop in for coffee quite a bit,” LeRoy said. “Well, I must have been helping out there for about three or four weeks when Bill joked one morning: ‘Are ya gonna be a grease monkey your whole life or come over and get a real job?’”
The idea appealed to LeRoy, so he talked to Bill about it more. “He talked me into helping him out with cutting hair of older guys in the ward who weren’t able to leave their home,” LeRoy said. “It wasn’t too long before I was called on by other barbers on the westside asking if I could help out some of their guys who were homebound. Then once I started cutting more hair, I had guys asking if I could cut their grass too. It got to a point where I was going house to house with the barber kit Bill gave me in the basket of my bicycle and then pulling along a Handy Andy rotary grass cutter.”
As LeRoy became a teenager, he also added more odd jobs - including raking leaves, shoveling snow, and then working part-time at the pea cannery - to his resume. “I liked cutting hair and helping folks out,” he said. “The more I did it, the better I got at it.”
One day when he was a high school senior, his dad suggested he make barbering a career. “We’re talking one day and he says to me, ‘You should really stick with cutting hair … you’re pretty darn good at it.’” Not long afterward, LeRoy also overheard some of the guys at the barber shop talking about him, and they suggested the same. “It makes a guy feel good to hear stuff like that, ya know, so I decided to stick with it.”
About to graduate from high school in 1961, LeRoy checked into barber school. But with the Vietnam War going on at that time, “Guys were signing up for everything they could find, to avoid being drafted. So I didn’t have much luck with that,” he said.
He considered becoming an underwater demolition man with the Navy and going to sea, but he got pneumonia which ended that plan. In Feb. 1962, LeRoy was drafted into the U.S. Army. His technical military occupational specialty was radio repairman, but barbering quickly became his side job. “When they found out I could cut hair, first thing they said, ‘Bring them clippers out. You’re our barber.’ And so I started cutting hair for them. … Kinda like when I was a kid, it started with me cutting a few guys’ hair and next thing I know, I have other guys and their buddies wanted me to cut their hair. As time went on, I started cutting hair for officers.”
When LeRoy got back to Merrill after he was discharged from the Army in 1965, he went to work at a local factory for a short time and then soon started cutting hair for Norm Raasch at Ideal Barber Shop [which was located where Banker’s Square Park is today]. He attended and graduated from the former vocational school on Merrill’s westside, obtaining his barber’s license in 1968. When LeRoy started at Ideal, he said he was the first barber in the area to have customers make appointments. It was a new concept to Merrill, and “Norm said, ‘You’re never gonna make it.’” LeRoy recalls. But it wasn’t very long before Norm saw how well it was working and started operating by appointment, too. Walk-ins were still welcome when a barber was there, but it made it a little easier to balance things, LeRoy said.
By the end of 1979, LeRoy was ready to start his own shop. He went out on his own, setting up his barber shop at 724 E. Second St. in Merrill. He opened Jan. 2, 1980, and operated his shop there for 44 years, until last week.

A very busy guy

In addition to barbering, LeRoy has been quietly involved in many aspects of the Merrill community over the years. LeRoy cut hair for the prisoners at the Lincoln County Jail and the nursing home (including the old nursing home before Pine Crest was built, LeRoy said) and cut and styled for the funeral homes. He served on the church council at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church and as an auctioneer for their fundraisers over the years, worked with the Merrill Snowmobile Club to bring snowmobile racing to the fair grounds in the 1970’s and helped get the Merrill Ice Drags off the ground and publicize it back in the day, and most recently facilitated the creation of the Veterans Memorial in the St. Francis Cemetery. Through his work on these and other causes he is passionate about, over the years LeRoy has invested himself into the community he loves. Most recently, he handed over management of the Veterans Memorial to the Knights of Columbus, entrusting them to carry it on with input from VFW Post 1638. It’s been difficult to let go of some of the projects that have been so important to him.
But he still has a plan for his future. LeRoy turns 82 this year, there are lots of doctor (not haircut) appointments on the books, and 2024 looks to be a year of transition.
First he wants to clean out his shop. LeRoy has long been a collector of Elvis memorabilia, much of which has been on display in his barber shop these last 40+ years. LeRoy said he is working with a third party to sell it and will donate all of the money to St. Francis Xavier School. Among his extensive collection of probably more than 200 items, he said he even has Elvis Presley bottles with booze still in them.
LeRoy will check with the Merrill Historical Society to see if they have any interest in his collection of historical barber shop chairs, brushes, and tools.
And of course there is more to go through. “We are going to try this year to start cleaning up stuff and work around our home and the barber shop,” Connie said. They also have a large shed behind their home, full of things to go through and pare down. “ we can see how we are feeling before we can make big trips,” she said.
LeRoy has enjoyed his 70 years as a barber immensely. Most importantly, he wants the community to know how much he appreciates them. “Thanks to Alan Klade for coming in for several years,” LeRoy said. “ thank you for all of the friendships I’ve had with my barbering … Thank you for supporting me.”

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