Local beautician, 92, has been working in same spot since 1954
(This article first appeared in the March print edition of the Hendersonian.)
In a small, white-paneled building not much bigger than a backyard shed, Ella Woolfolk has been fixing hair longer than most people in Henderson County have been alive.
She wakes four times each week and travels from her home in Cairo to the Plum Street shop, following a similar schedule since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, schools were segregated and the nation’s soldiers had left Korea with whispers of Vietnam on the horizon.
Stopping in for an interview, this reporter apologizes for having to ask a lady her age.
“I don’t mind,” Woolfolk says and pauses for emphasis. “29.”
She corrects herself in a moment, reversing the numbers for her correct age, 92.
Woolfolk was born and raised in Clarksville, Tenn., and came to the Henderson area in 1946. She graduated from Douglass High School in 1950 and soon started cosmetology school in Paducah. In 1954, she became licensed and bought the shop.
She had hoped her sister, Syrilla Gilbert, would work alongside her in the shop, but that didn’t end up happening. Most of the time, she’s worked alone in the little Plum Street business, which is how she preferred it, with only one or two customers in the shop at a time.
“I like one at a time. Always did,” she says. “I like working by myself.”
That way, there’s less likelihood of gossip, a piece of a salon culture that she’s always tried to avoid.
“I didn’t like to hear other people’s business,” she says.
She feels blessed. People have treated her well, she says, many bringing her food or sending flowers that she has displayed in her shop through the years. Of her clients, she says, “The people have been so nice. They were nice people. Just nice.”
Many, perhaps most, of her old customers have now passed.
But she still comes four days a week for appointments and for any who might walk in. On the day of the interview with the Hendersonian, one of her longtime clients, Lorraine Baymon, drove in from Morganfield.
Baymon says she’s been coming to Woolfolk to get her hair done for 40 years.
“She was the best beautician of all of them,” Baymon says. “Whatever style, she did it. We were all pleased with her work.”
Among the many changes since she opened shop in 1954 is the price of her work. Back then, she charged 75 cents for a cut and $1.75 for a press and curl and shampoo. Compare that to prices today at other salons where customers may spend $60, $70 or even hundreds of dollars.
And her prices now? $10.
“I don’t charge anything,” she says. “I’m just piddling.”
Adorned to the shop’s wood-paneled walls are two large collages of photos of past customers. But not all of them, according to Baymon.
“If she had pictures of all her customers, these walls would be covered,” Baymon says.
Also on her wall: a portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a framed copy of the Ten Commandments, and several honors bestowed on her for her years of service to the community. Also, an old photo of her with her family: daughter, Tonya, who lives in Louisville, and husband, Prince, who died in 2020, and with his family ran the well-known and beloved Woolfolk’s Barbecue in Cairo for many years. Prince Woolfolk was also an ordained minister.
Ella plays the piano at Walnut Hill Baptist Church on Sundays. Mondays and Wednesdays she takes off from work and comes in the rest of the week. She doesn’t see her schedule changing any time soon.
“If I quit and go home and sit down, I wouldn’t be able to move,” Woolfolk says. “I’m not doing what you call work now. I’m trying to do something so I’m not sitting at home.”
Her work, though, has been something she’s enjoyed, and still enjoys.
“I just kept working and working. I’ve enjoyed it. I really have,” she says. “I’ve enjoyed life. Life has been good to me.”
