BREWER, Maine — David Grant always closed his North Main Street barber shop on Mondays. That’s the day he would cut the hair of elderly residents at the Ellen M. Leach Memorial Home in Brewer, people who knew him recalled Wednesday.
Grant, 73, was struck by a car while crossing North Main to get from a parking lot to his shop around 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 20. He died from his injuries Monday at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.
Ed Campbell, an 86-year-old resident of the Leach Home, said that he had his hair cut by Grant a few times since moving into the facility last April.
“He was a Godsend for us,” Campbell said. The Leach Home’s beauty salon also was closed on Mondays, so Grant would come in and take it over to give cuts to the men, according to Campbell.
“We’d get to talk about old times,” Campbell said. “He was always up on current affairs around the Brewer area.”
Grant had been cutting hair in his shop at 96 North Main St. for 53 years. As police continued to investigate the collision that claimed his life, people in the neighborhood mourned his loss.
Coleen Patterson, owner of Main Street Barber & Beauty, had been his neighbor for about 2½ years. The two businesses shared a building, but were never competitors, Patterson said Wednesday.
Patterson said Grant was “almost like a co-worker,” as their two businesses frequently shared customers when one of them was out of work or out to lunch.
“He has a lot of loyal customers,” Patterson said.
Grant was the only barber in his shop, a small room with one barber’s chair and four other seats for waiting customers. The shop has been closed since his death.
A sign posted on Grant’s door before he died told his customers to go next door for their haircuts, with the promise that Patterson’s employees would donate a portion of their proceeds to help Grant. Since Grant passed away, Patterson said the donations likely would go to the Bangor Masonic Foundation. Grant was a Mason and past master of Rising Virtue Lodge No. 10.
Larry Doughty, a former Brewer city councilor, said he was one of Grant’s customers for about a decade.
“I always enjoyed going in there,” he said Wednesday.
Doughty said Grant was a quiet guy when he had customers in the room.
“When there were a few people in there, he liked to listen,” he said. By doing that, he heard a lot of stories, news, goings-ons and rumors from around town. When he was one-on-one with a customer, he tended to open up more.
Grant enjoyed talking about politics and town gossip, Doughty said.
Doughty said he joked around with Grant, bugging him about when he was going to retire. Doughty said Grant always responded that he didn’t plan to pack away his scissors and comb.
“I’m going to miss Dave, and a lot of others will too,” Doughty said. “I know there’s other barbers, but they’re not like Dave.”
A year before his death, Grant was struck by a vehicle at the same crosswalk on North Main near the Church Street intersection. Grant complained of leg pain and was transported to Eastern Maine Medical Center, according to police. The subsequent investigation found that the vehicle was not speeding and that the crosswalk was obstructed by snow.
The city placed a portable pedestrian crossing sign in the middle of the road after the 2013 crash, but it was removed in winter to clear the way for plows.
Brewer City Manager Steve Bost said Wednesday that after the first accident he offered Grant a parking spot at City Hall, just behind his shop, but Grant declined.
Just like the first crash, the fatal one occurred before sunrise.
Brewer police said Wednesday that based on a state police reconstruction of the crash they don’t believe lighting at the crossing is an issue, with three streetlights in the vicinity.
The day after the crash, police went to the scene at 6:30 a.m. to test the visibility in similar light and weather conditions, according to Brewer police Deputy Chief Jason Moffitt.
One officer stood in the intersection, while two police vehicles approached from opposite directions, recreating the moments before the crash. The pedestrian and crossing were clearly visible under the streetlights and in the headlights, according to Moffitt
That changed, however, when the inbound car approached. For a few moments, the oncoming headlights hindered the vision of the outbound driver and made it difficult to see the person in the crosswalk, according to Moffitt.
The re-enactment confirmed the statements of the driver whose vehicle struck Grant and the driver approaching from the opposite direction that neither saw Grant, according to police.
Moffitt said that after viewing surveillance camera footage of the car just prior to the crash, police don’t believe the driver of the vehicle that struck Grant, Maria Mann, 42, of Bucksport, was speeding. They also don’t expect distracted driving to be a factor, having searched the driver’s phone with her permission.
There have been 13 vehicle-pedestrian collisions in the past three years in Brewer, according to police records. Three took place near the intersection of Church and Main streets — two of them involved Grant in the crosswalk, while the third involved a pedestrian who crossed in the area, but outside of the crosswalk. Bost said that particular crosswalk isn’t heavily used because most businesses in the area have parking spaces on their side of the street.
In most instances, the crashes occurred outside of crosswalks or when a pedestrian didn’t wait for a signal to cross, according to police. A few instances were unusual, with pedestrians admitting to darting out in front of cars or cars jumping curbs to strike people on sidewalks.
During the past year, Bangor installed large, yellow signs with flashing lights meant to warn drivers of someone waiting to cross at several busy crossings in the city.
Brewer has a similar sign near Brewer Community School, and plans to install a second one at the heavily used crosswalk in front of St. Theresa’s Church. Bost said the city isn’t planning on putting such an indicator at North Main and Church streets.
Brewer police run periodic “directed patrols” of crosswalks, stationing plain-clothes officers at crossings and issuing summonses to drivers who fail to yield. None of those violations have occurred near Church Street, according to police.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter @nmccrea213.