Dwight Helstrom is Presque Isle’s longest serving barber, with 50 years in the trade, and he has no plans of retiring soon.
Helstrom started cutting hair in Presque Isle 50 years ago in July and has been doing it ever since, much of that time under the name of Dwight’s Barbershop.
“Everybody asks me about quitting, but I have no plans for retirement, not as long as my health keeps up. I guess I enjoy it too much,” Helstrom, 69, said.
“I have had some issues” — a heart attack at age 40 and orthopedic back screws — “but I’m lucky enough to feel well and carry on.”
Helstrom grew up in Perham and went to barber school in Lewiston after high school. At age 19, he settled in Presque Isle, where he moved through a variety of businesses and locations.
“I felt that people needed some kind of a trade in life, and I felt that I’m kind of a people person,” Helstrom said. “When I first came to town in ’66, there were 12 barbers. I used to be the youngest, and now I’m the only and the oldest.”
Helstrom, however, is likely not the oldest among an aging population of barbers in the state, according to the Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation.
“We don’t know if any licensed barber is actually working — only whether they are licensed,” Doug Dunbar, legislative liaison for the licensing agency, said. But he said there is still an active license on the books for an 89-year-old man in Saco.
“Regarding the age of barbers in general, we know that of the 394 licensed barbers in Maine, 132 were born prior to 1950,” Dunbar said. “About 92 were born during the 1950s, and 85 were born during the 1960s, so it’s clear that the barbering population is on the older side.”
Traditional barbershops have long focused on men, while these days numerous hair cutting businesses cater to men and women. Helstrom recalls his time in business as a longtime part of the community, making friends with customers over multiple generations of families and taking in a bird’s eye view of the changes to Presque Isle’s downtown.
Helstrom started his career at Herman Daigle’s on Main Street in 1966. In 1968, he joined Luke Wieder’s Barbershop next to the Braden Theater on Main Street and soon took over the shop when Wieder became a full-time sheriff.
In 1971, with his brother Sterling as a newly trained barber and partner, Helstrom purchased another barbershop business at the Northeastland Hotel, along with chrome barber chairs that are still in use today and originally were brought to Presque Isle by the Italian immigrant Vincent Barresi in 1932.
The Helstrom brothers moved back to the Braden Theatre location in 1986, and Dwight Helstrom remained there after Sterling’s 1995 retirement. In 2000, Dwight Helstrom moved to his current location, two doors down on Main Street, and is helped by another part-time barber, Wendy Kingsbury of Bridgewater.
Helstrom is still friends with his first client, 85-year-old Roscoe McIntosh, whose hair he cut in July of 1966 at Herman Daigle’s State Street barbershop. McIntosh used to operate the M&S Office Products Store in Presque Isle and checks in with Helstrom from his home at the Leisure Village apartments.
Dwight’s Barbershop will be hosting a weeklong open house marking his 50 years in barbering from Aug. 12 to Aug. 20.