Annapolis Stories:A Cut Above: Angelo Calabrese

Annapolis Stories tell the living history of the Annapolis area through the lens of individual experiences.

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On May 26, 1948, young Angelo Calabrese received the piece of paper he had been waiting for all his life: his Certificate of Registration as an Apprentice Barber from the state of Maryland.

He was 15 years old but already had a full year of experience under his belt, practicing on his father's customers at the Capital City Barbershop on West Street.

"If someone wanted a crew cut, my dad would ask if I could practice on them first. After I was done, he'd cut it all off."

And now, he was a barber for real. At least, one recognized by the state. His fellow students at Annapolis High School lined up for his services.

"Man, I had so many customers. Can you imagine as a young kid, having a barber your own age right there in school?" After gym class he would cut and comb hair, "right there in the locker room. I could do ducktails, anything." He charged 50 cents a cut. "Nowadays, it's $15."

Barbering was a family affair for the Calabreses. His father, Andrew, and the four other Calabrese brothers left Sicily after World War I and came to America to make their fortune. All five were trained as barbers in the old country. Their first stop was Buffalo, N.Y., which was too cold for their Sicilian nature. They moved on to Baltimore where they heard about the Naval Academy in Annapolis. "They figured there were a lot of men there that needed haircuts," Angelo says.

But only Angelo's father and his Uncle Louie decided to remain in Annapolis. They set up shop at 20 West St. just off Church Circle on the ground floor of a three-story building (which is now the site of a small park next tothe Annapolis Visitor's Center after the building burned down many years ago). The family lived above the shop. "West Street was the center of town then," Angelo says.

On hot summer evenings his father would bring out all 12 waiting chairs from the shop and line them up in front of the building. "My mom would make lemonade and the family would sit outside. People would walk by and stop and tell us the news from West Street on their way downtown - who was pregnant, who was moving, and so on. Then they'd stop on the way back and tell us the news from downtown."

At 18, Angelo received his Master Barber License, becoming the youngest barber certified by the state up to that date. Then he joined the Navy. "Of course, I chose Navy," he says, fondly remembering playing ball as a kid with the midshipmen on the academy grounds after school. "It was all I knew."

The Korean War was in full swing when Angelo reported to boot camp in Bainbridge, Worchester County. The Navy Chief typing up the processing forms barely looked up as he yelled "next" and began firing a round of standard questions at the young recruit. With his eyes fixed on the page in front of him, he asked Angelo "Did you have a job before coming here?"

"Yessir," Angelo said.

"What did you do?" the man asked.

"Barber, sir."

The man stopped typing, looked up at Angelo and ran across the room. He rummaged through a file drawer and came back with another form for him to fill out. From then on, the young man from Annapolis with the Master Barber License was no longer a standard recruit.

"I'm telling you," Angelo says, "They really needed barbers, especially at sea."

His barbering skills put him on the fast track to sea duty with the Navy. He was sent directly to Norfolk after boot camp and began cutting hair immediately while onboard the USS Marquette.

"Some of the guys on the other ships at the base would see the cuts I gave the officers and ask where they got it done." The next day, they'd come onto the Marquette and sign the appointment roster so they could get their hair done by Angelo. "It was fine by me. It was great practice."

He may have been a Navy man, but he was still a barber at heart. "On liberty I'd go and sit in barbershops just to watch the guys work," he said. At sea, he not only cut hair but trained deckhands and other seamen to cut hair to help with the workload.

Eventually, he got transferred to the USS Marquette which sailed through the Panama Canal on its way to Korea. But before the ship could leave San Francisco, the war ended. His next assignment was on the USS Helena, the admiral's flagship.

The first time he cut Admiral McCorkle's hair, the officer noticed Angelo's name and mentioned that he used to get his hair cut by a gentleman named Calabrese when he was a captain in Annapolis. "That must have been my Dad," Angelo said.

Later, he realized the admiral had been talking about his Uncle Louie, who had cut hair at Carvel Hall. But by that time, the officer had told everyone that Angelo's father cut his hair in Annapolis and the young seaman wasn't about to correct him.

The admiral and Angelo reminisced about the town they knew and loved. "We'd talk about Annapolis all the time," Angelo recalls, "The Little Campus Inn, all the people we both knew. In the Navy, it's a small world."

While on leave from a Mediterranean tour of duty, Angelo took a trip to the family's hometown in Italy. There, he met the beautiful Anna Piraino. When he came back a year later, after leaving the service, he brought his mother to visit her relatives. The relationship with Anna blossomed and in June of 1956 they were married in a small church in Sant'ambrogio. By October of that year, his bride joined him in Annapolis.

Angelo worked with his father and his brother, John, at the Capital City Barbershop for nine years before opening "Angie's Barbershop" at 250 West St., where Park Place now stands. "It was a great spot, right between Marbert Motors and Phipps Buick. Guys would walk around, look at cars, and then get their hair cut."

When Marbert Motors bought the building, Angelo had to find a new place, eventually settling up shop on the second floor of 2083 West St., a high-rise office building at the corner of Riva Road and West Street. He remained there for 28 years.

Most barbers rely on foot traffic, but Angelo had built up a steady clientele by then, many of them luminaries in sports and state government, including Speaker of the House (and later governor) Marvin Mandel; and Alex Sandusky who played on the Baltimore Colts 1958 championship team. Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots had his hair cut in Angelo's chair when he was a small boy, and continued to have his hair styled at Angie's Barbershop until he went off to college.

Angelo was doing well by his family trade.

"And then came the Beatles," he says, shaking his head. "Guys would let their hair grow out for a year. That hurt." Angelo sold Knapp mail-order shoes to supplement his income during the years men let their hair grow long.

"All the barbers were hurt," he remembers. "Some quit the business. Many old-timers retired."

But Angelo kept going. And he's still at it, cutting, trimming and working the straight-edge razor at Dennis McAuliff's Eastport Barbershop on Bay Ridge Avenue.

His five grown children have all chosen other careers, leaving Angelo to carry on the family tradition.

"Two hundred years of barbering in Annapolis," Angelo says. "My father Andrew was a barber here for over 50 years, my Uncle Louie was a barber for 50 years, my brother John for 50 years and on May 26th, it will be 60 years for me."

The man who has kept the men of Annapolis looking their best at home and at sea smiles as he recalls the Calabrese legacy. "I'm kind of proud of that, really, because I'm the last one."

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Janice Gary is an award-winning writer of creative nonfiction. She teaches memoir at Annapolis Senior Center.