When I was 23 years old, my Uncle Eddie pointed me to Jesus. Here is a newspaper article about his legacy of being a barber for 53 years. -Paul
Newnan barber Eddie Millians retiring after 53 years in business
by Clay Neely
August 25, 2023
This article is reposted from the Newnan Times-Herald here.
A community doesn’t change overnight. Bit by bit, little changes accumulate until you turn around one day and wonder where the time went.
Newnan is certainly no exception, and one of those little changes is happening presently.
After 53 years, Eddie Millians is preparing to call it a day from cutting hair at his unassuming barbershop on Dixon Street.
If you sit down to talk with Millians, you quickly learn that he’s a bona fide listener, a key asset for any barber or bartender. Over the last five decades, he’s heard his share of stories, but he keeps most of them in confidence.
“People share things with me they wouldn’t share with their family,” he recalled. “Because of that, I had the opportunity to pray for them. Sometimes they knew, sometimes they didn’t.”
Millians got his start early. At 10, his father Bobby passed away. Being the oldest child, Millians quickly understood the need to help provide income for his family.
Mr. Elliot Kee was a friend of the Millians family and took the boy under his wing. At 16 years old, Millians went to work with Kee in his barbershop.
“He had a lot of patience and had to put up with some youthful foolishness,” Millians recalled. “Mr. Kee taught me to cut hair but was also like a father figure to me. He mentored me in a lot of ways.”
Millians worked “shoulder to shoulder” with Kee as an apprentice and was under his direct tutelage for 1,500 hours. He finished high school but kept working at the barbershop.
He still remembers giving his first haircut to a 7-year-old boy named Sandy Spinks.
“My early days were spent cutting a lot of little boys’ hair,” he recalled. “That was one of the precious parts – now they’re 50 years old and still coming to me.”
While Newnan has changed dramatically since Millians started, not much has changed inside his barbershop. The way he does it now is exactly how he’s done it since the beginning, right down to being a cash-only business.
“That’s what people want,” he said. “The real treasure is not in the money but the people I met. Some became dear friends – people I hunt, fish and go to church with. It’s just one big family with different names.”
The ‘big family’
The barbershop offers a great cross-section of life in a small town. Millians’ mother was secretary to Clifford Cranford, who served as solicitor general of Coweta County from 1952- 1984.
Cranford was a regular customer of Millians and often shared courthouse happenings with him.
“He never wanted to see marriages end, so he’d ask me to join him in praying for them not to get a divorce,” Millians recalled.
Commissioner Bob Blackburn said Millians will be sorely missed.
“He’s our family barber, and (we) loved going hunting and fishing with him,” he said. “He’s as Newnan as they come, and I can’t say enough about how much we love and appreciate him.”
Legendary local cartoonist David Boyd ultimately became a customer of Millians.
“Now that was pretty fun,” Millians said. “We got to be good friends and referred to our appointments as summit conferences.”
Boyd’s son-in-law, Jason Bedingfield, has been a customer of Millians since moving to Newnan in 1988. He now takes his youngest son, John, to get his hair cut as well.
“I care about the man. He’s old-school Newnan and a store of local knowledge,” Bedingfield said. “Usually, when you’re getting a haircut, you make small talk with your barber. But Mr. Eddie knew my mom, aunt, uncles and cousins because he went to school with them at Western. He knew my grandparents, too, when they were still young parents. So he’s got lots of great stories.”
Even death can’t stop customers from needing Millians’ services. He often cuts the hair of his deceased clients.
“I’ve never been bothered by the dead ones. They can’t hurt you, and you can’t hurt them,” he said. “A lot of memories go through your head when you do that. They have been customers for so many years.”
Like bartenders, barbers are renowned for their ability to listen to clients without interjecting their own experiences. Millians said the days following 9/11 were some of his most difficult times working with customers.
“At that point, I still had a lot of World War II vets who had been through so much,” he recalled. “They wouldn’t talk to their families about the horrors of war, but they could share those memories with me. They could cry, I would cry. I would go home emotionally drained.”
Millians’ “greatest generation” clients provided wisdom and insight. Those clients would be 100 years old now, he said, and he misses those priceless conversations he enjoyed with them for decades.
“The Great Depression, World War II, raising kids – they went through more stuff than we have and often would share those experiences with me,” Millians said. “You can glean a whole lot of wisdom behind a chair. But you have to be a good listener. That’s why God gave us two ears but only one mouth. You should listen twice as much as you talk.”
Coweta Judge Emory Palmer has been a loyal customer of Millians for 40 years and confirmed his listening prowess. Like Bedingfield, he also took his children to Millians for their first haircuts.
“He is a man of few words,” Palmer said. “I hate to see him go because it is one more thing from the Newnan of the 1970s, the Newnan of my childhood, that is fading away. I felt like a man sitting in there as a 7-year-old reading a Field & Stream magazine while waiting for a haircut. You don’t get that at GreatClips. You also don’t get your neck shaved with a straight razor.”
The next chapter
Millians’ retirement came along like many others. The timing was right, he said, and although he’ll be sad to close a chapter on a long career as Newnan’s barber, he’s looking forward to the future.
“I don’t really know what I’ll do yet, but it will be a learning experience,” Millians said. “I plan on writing a book based on lessons I’ve learned from a whole lot of living and listening. Some customers will be in there, but the names will be changed to protect the innocent.”
He said he plans to spend more time with his wife, Vivian, whom he first met at a Bible study class at Moreland Methodist Church. The couple, who lives in Welcome near Western Elementary School, recently celebrated 31 years of marriage.
Millians may be closing the doors of Eddie’s Barber Shop, but the memories and friendships are eternal.
“I appreciate all the people who were good to me and hope they think of me as much as I do of them,” he said.