Stories From Main Street: Master Barber Gives Back To Westchester Community
NEW YORK(CBSNewYork) -- Can scissors save someone?
"It's something that changed my life," Master Barber, Anthony Barton said.
Barton volunteers at Greenburgh's Theodore Young Community Center to teach the art of cutting hair.
Stories From Main Street: Master Barber Gives Back To Westchester Community
"I come here twice a week for two hours a day in the middle of the day," he said. "I have to cancel my own clients to do this. Like I said, at the end of the day, anytime when I leave this place I feel so rewarded."
For the most part his students are unemployed, and coming out of prison.
"Going anywhere and getting turned away was just really, really hard for me," Greg Brown said. "Hearing about this opportunity was a light at the end of the tunnel."
Brown is now employed as a barber's apprentice.
Barton can relate to his students' struggle.
"I had a rough childhood. I was raised by drug-addicted parents, and it led me to the street life to support their habits," he said. "I was incarcerated. It was pressed upon me to enter into a barber program that was happening at the facility."
Barton entered that program when he was 17 and never looked back. Now he's giving back with free barber classes.
"Straight-razor shave, hot towel, the vanishing cream with the menthol," he said.
They even lather up a balloon to practice the delicate strokes with the razor.
Greenburgh Commissioner of Resources William Carter said the students now have a chance for a better future.
"A brighter outlook on their future, and their future will include being a productive member of society, and not someone who goes in and out of prison," Carter said.
