By the time she was 13, Paula Fazio was hard at work cleaning up a salon. Her starter beauty culture kit cost just $15, and she had her hairdresser’s license by age 17.
Joe Fazio would watch his father work at a barbershop at the ripe age of 10, and about six years later he had his license, too.
Now, after nearly four decades of cutting and styling the hair of their Sequim neighbors at side-by-side Sequim Beauty Salon and Fazio’s Barbershop, the Fazios are calling it a career.
“It was a wonderful place to go — it was more than just a barber shop,” said Charles Rusciano, one of Joe’s long-time customers. “Joe and Paula made a very fine team, wonderful people.
“I used to stop in every now and then even when not needing a cut … just to spend some time at the shop, visit with Joe and have a good time.”
Paula’s customer Freddie Crause reiterated the feeling.
“She and Joe are very special people,” Crause said. “It was a wonderful shop to go to. so welcoming. It was more than getting your hair done, it was a weekly outing.”
Joe and Paula Fazio, front row/center, celebrate their retirement after almost 40 years of hairdressing and barber work in their side-by-side downtown locations. Photo courtesy of Fazio family
The Fazios wound up keeping a tradition in their location on West Washington Street: Paula said that when they replaced the heater a few years ago, they found a business card belonging to Edith Keyser. Keyser is mentioned online in Scandanavian American’s June 21, 1950 issue as operating “Sequim Beauty Shop, Specializing in Cold Waves and All Other Waves COMPLETE BEAUTY SERVICE, Your Hair — My Interest, EDITH E. KEYSER. Owner Sequim. Wash. Phone 611.”
Paula first worked for Patty Baker at the same location and then bought the business in 1982 when Baker moved to California.
Paula said, “So she (Keyser) owned it before Patty, and I owned it afterwards. As far as I know, there’s only been three salons here and that’s it.”
Said Joe, “Same company, different people.”
The couple discussed the bittersweet nature of this local business permanently closing as well the change in their own lives in a conversation at their nearly empty shop.
“It’s a big part of me, going in every day,” Joe said. “I’m gonna miss the interaction with people. Because I do have fun in there. It’s fun. People think they pay me for the entertainment.”
After selling off the remaining items in the shop, along with other activities involved in closing a business, this will be the first period of time since age 13 in which Paula will not be working. She said she has not made plans for her free time, although the couple mentioned international travel and local bicycle riding as two of the things they enjoy together.
“We don’t have anything on the docket right now,” Paula said. “We’re just trying to empty this place.”
Family tradition
Joe said he used to hang out at his father’s barber shop in Brooklyn.
“When I was 10 years old, I’d sit in my dad’s station, and I liked to listen to stories,” he recalled. “You don’t realize it but you’re watching, while you’re looking at your dad tell a story, you’re watching his technique, some of that gets in your brain.”
He accomplished his first partial haircut at 10.
One summer, Joe asked his father if he could attend hair school in his off time. At first his father felt that 15 was too young, “but he went along with it,” Joe said.
So Joe took the train every day to Manhattan.
“I went full time, 40 odd hours a week,” Joe said. “Then in September I had to go back to high school. Shortly after I finished my hours.”
Joe Fazio cleans accumulated notes off his barber shop mirror as he and his wife Paula work on the final closure of the Sequim Beauty Salon, acquired from the previous owner in 1982. Sequim Gazette photo by Emily Matthiessen
The school issued the 16-year-old an apprentice license.
Joe worked after school for his father, who had learned from his grandfather in a different shop in Brooklyn.
Paula attended a vocational school for hairdressing, graduating at 17.
“Vocational high schools are great. It cost me $15 to buy my beauty culture kit, with all the stuff in it to start. For people that don’t want to go to college, vocational high school is the best thing in the world. I mean, it supported me the rest of my life.
“A $15 investment. If you stay with it — you know, you have to stay with it.”
The Fazios met through a friend of Joe’s when Paula was 17 and Joe 19.
“And then I ran into her on the beach,” said Joe. “It was my birthday. Then we started dating.”
They have been married 54 years.
Calling Sequim home
Joe returned to barbering after a stint in the U.S. Navy as a dentist and then working in California in sales.
The Fazios moved to Sequim in December of 1980.
“We thought it would be a good place to raise the kids,”Joe said.
At the time their sons were 6, 10 and 11. All three sons are still in Sequim, along with six grandchildren and a number of great grandchildren. Three of Paula’s sisters have also moved to Sequim.
The Fazios said that when they started, about half of their clients were retired, and many lived in Sunland. They have both served families in which four generations of members have entrusted them with their hair. Paula’s customer Freddie Crause, for example, has been coming since 1987.
“She and Joe are very special people,” Crause said. “It was a wonderful shop to go to. So welcoming. It was more than getting your hair done, it was a weekly outing.”
Paula Fazio smiles at her husband of 54 years, Joe Fazio, as he speaks about post-retirement on the eve of the shutdown of Sequim Beauty Salon and Barbership, a business they’ve run together for 39 years in Sequim. Sequim Gazette photo by Emily Matthiessen
Joe and Paula said they’ve heard it all in the shop.
“People tell you everything,” said Paula. “I’ve heard every scenario you can think of.”
Paula and Joe set up the salon so that they each had a separate space to work with their clients. About living together and working together, “People say how can you do it?” said Paula. She explained that they give each other space.
“There’s certain things that I don’t do that he does and things I do that he doesn’t do. If you let the other person do what they do, there’s no problem.”
“When we’re both busy,” said Joe, “I can’t even see from behind that mirror. If I get a little break I might be standing by her station, talking, and trying to get in on the conversation.”
“And I’m giving him the evil eye,” said Paula.
Time to step away
“The second time I went back to Joe,” said Rusciano, “I sat in the chair, and of course it was a full house, and I said to Joe, ‘Look, I would like you to cut my hair real close on the right side of my head. I want you to cut the left side of my head real jagged. The top, I want you to spike it as uneven as possible. And of course in the back, I’d like you to cut it at a severe angle.’ Joe of course said, ‘I can’t cut your hair like that.’ And I said, ‘Why not? You cut it like that last time.’”
Joe said, “I feel like the haircut should look like it fits on your head.” He spoke about the importance of being consistent with haircuts so that the client knows what to expect.
Paula, too, was consistent in her quality, which was one reason she had so many loyal customers.
“She even found me someone to do my hair like she did,” said Crause. “It’s working out very nicely. That’s the kind of person she is.”
It wasn’t all business, though.
“One thing we did back in the day,” said Paula, “was every Friday we we got dressed up like different characters. I was everything from Dolly Parton to, oh my gosh, a bunny rabbit. It was fun. We did it for years.”
Paula and Joe Fazio hold hands outside the back door of their beauty salon/barber shop during the last days of their nearly 40 years of working together to cut and style the hair of the citizens of Sequim and Clallam County. Sequim Gazette photo by Emily Matthiessen
Paula realized it was time to retire when she noticed that she was older than more than half her clients. With the labor shortage, running the shop had become a bit difficult.
“We’ve been short of help; we’re working five, six days a week, you know, then you have one day where you collapse, and you clean house, you go grocery shopping,” Paula said.
Joe intended at first to continue until the end of the year, but decided to stop when Paula did.
“I didn’t really warn people,” he said. “You know, I was kind of procrastinating. I probably could have stayed here until the end of the year in my own section. But, we’re like one business, so I thought it would be too confusing.
“I really don’t want to be in this building by myself. Without the girls here, it’s no fun.”
The feeling, apparently, is mutual.
“I’m gonna miss both those people,” Rusciano said. “I enjoyed their company and they made a great asset to Sequim.”
