The Madison Courier
Madison, Indiana
February 23, 2002
Earl Milles
Earl Milles, 100, of Lexington, died Thursday, Feb. 21, 2002, at the Medical Center of Southern Indiana in Charlestown.
He was born March 25, 1901, in Lexington, the son of George W. and Emma Hollenbeck Milles. He was a retired self-employed barber and a former trustee of Lexington Township. He was a member of Lexington Presbyterian Church.
Survivors include two daughters, Flora Jean Kleopfer of Lexington and Earlene M. Kleopfer of Lawrence, Kan.; five grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and five great-great grandchildren.
He was preceded in death by her parents; his wife, Aletha M. Milles; one brother and one sister.
Services will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at Stewart Funeral Home in Scottsburg, with burial in Lexington Cemetery.
Visitation will be from 4 to 8 p.m. today, and from 9 a.m. until the services Sunday, at the funeral home.
Memorials may be designated to Lexington Presbyterian Church or Lexington Cemetery.
Louisville Courier Journal
Obituary
02/23/2002 - Milles
LEXINGTON -- Earl Milles, 100, died Thursday, February 21, 2002, at the Medical Center of Southern Indiana, Charlestown, IN. Funeral: 2 p.m. Sunday at Stewart Funeral Home. Burial: Lexington Cemetery. Visitation: 4-8 p.m. Saturday and after 9 a.m. Sunday at the funeral home.
Earl Milles was born on March 25, 1901 in Scott County, Indiana. He was the son of Emma Hollenbeck and George Milles. He married Aletha Muriel Hall on September 28, 1921 in Scott County, Indiana. They had two daughters. He celebrated his 100th birthday on March 25, 2001.
Lexington barber, 94, has not lost a step
By Kory Wilcoxson
Evening News
Lifestyle Editor
If any of us are lucky enough to live to be 94 years old, breathing will
probably be about all the exercise we can handle. But Earl Milles of Lexington,
Indiana, has not let over 90 years of living keep him from his daily occupation
of cutting hair. Bob Carter of Otisco remembers getting his hair cut by Milles
when Carter was a little boy, and he talked to him about his experiences
over 74 years of work. Milles started cutting hair when he was 19, and he
remembers a shave and a haircut being 40 cents. Milles told Carter that in
all his years of work he has been out of business only about 20 days. He
bought his current shop after his original burned down in 1943. His only
time away from the barber chair was when he worked as a street car conductor
in Indianapolis, but he soon returned because the streets were too confusing.
Milles has also dedicated his Wednesdays and Sundays to cutting hair in local
hospitals and nursing homes. Even at 94, Milles' humor is as sharp as ever.
When asked what it takes to give a good haircut, he shot back, "Who said
I'm good?" He told Carter he'll think about retiring "if I ever get old enough."
Carter said Milles plans on cutting hair as long as he can, because it is
something he enjoys doing. Carter's visit to Milles'shop turned into nostalgic
storytelling festival, with Milles telling tale after tale, most of them
humorous, about the townsfolk and his daily activities.
Milles still keeps up with most of the people in the town, and most of them
get their ears lowered at his shop. Milles summed up his experiences when
Carter asked him if he's been successful in his profession. "I've lead a
good life," said Milles.
The article was accompanied by a picture of his barber shop in Lexington,
Indiana and a picture of him cutting hair in his shop. A similar news story
was done by a Louisville TV station a few years earlier.
He can still cut it
Barber, 90, keeps on working at a fair Clip
By Dales Moss
Southern Indiana Columnist
LEXINGTON, Ind. - George Horton went into the Army wanting anything but a flattop. He came out wanting nothing but one.
Earl Milles won't style hair. He'll use scissors only if a customer insists, and he won't clip
initials into a boy's scalp even if he does. Milles won't put anything on hair harder to spell than Brylcreem. He won't initiate conversation, and he won't finish it if it's about religion or politics.
But Milles does flattops, among a few other cuts, and has for 73 years.
Horton admires Milles for his age, and pays him for his skill. "He does an excellent job with these flattops," said Horton, 64, a soybean farmer in Nabb. "I've had one since '51, and I don't want to change."
So Horton is at home in the only barbershop in Lexington and with Milles, who's nearly 91.
Once 25 cents, a Milles hair-cut now is $4 despite his "hearing they get $6 in Scottsburg."
The hardwood cash register was used when Milles got it 30 years ago; so was the porcelain-base kid chair he bought for $25 and for which he has been offered $300.
Partly empty bottles and jars of lotions and creams - 3 Roses Hair Tonic and HASK Hair & Scalp Treatment among them - line the counter behind him and fill a cabinet off to his side.
He had a pool table in an adjacent room, but a couple of decades ago the noise of play and players got to be too much for Milles and his wife, Aletha, who died last year. They lived and raised two daughters in the same buildings as his shop - just knock if you need a haircut when the shop is closed - and he served as Lexington Township trustee from there in the 1940s.
The stack of Readers Digests and Field and Streams by the waiting chairs is up-to-date. But those and Milles’ licenses, good until 1995, are about all that is.
"That's probably as long as I'll need them," Milles said of the licenses.
Milles' career predates electric razors "Then I got 32-volt clippers and boy, I thought I had something," he said.
He's cut hair in buildings on all four corners of a square built around the former Lexington High, now an elementary school. On Saturday nights, you couldn't find a downtown parking space in what once was the Scott County seat.
The activity in Milles' shop was one of the few signs of life in downtown Lexington the morning Horton got flattened and 70-year-old Arthur Smith of Charlestown came in for a trim.
Horton has come here all his life. His father and son and grandson are also among the thousands Milles has stood over. The core of steadies slowly dwindles and Smith, Milles said, is a veritable newcomer. "What's it been, a year, or two or three?" he asked Smith.
"Oh, about 10," Smith said.
"That's a sign of senility," Smith went on, with a smug smile Milles couldn't see. "There are three symptoms of senility.
"One is you don't remember like you used to.... And I don't remember the other two."
Milles remembers being talked into this trade by the town barber, who vowed to stay with Milles should he go to barber college (tuition $75) and then buy the man out (for $600). Milles did, and did, but the man didn't. "He left after the first day," Milles said.
Milles sometimes wishes he'd left too, sometimes wonders what he's missed.
"Ain't you liked it a little bit?" asked Horton at this surprising news.
"Oh yeah," Milles said. "I like to meet people."
Milles hasn't missed many jokes, but he recalls almost none he's heard. "Oh, I'll get one on a preacher and tell him," he said. "And he'll hear one on a barber and tell me."
"He's a listener," grandson and housemate James Kleopfer said.
"I've heard some pretty dirty tales," Milles said, but he has spread none of them.
Milles has been asked by more than one customer to put in a good word for them with Kleopfer, the Scott circuit judge. Milles won't do that, either.
"I'm always afraid I'll say something I shouldn't," Milles said.
He is in good health, other than a bum knee, yet daughter Jean Kleopfer worries about his keeping at it. Then again, she knows he'd be unhappy retired.
"It's just his life. It's all he's ever done."
The article was accompanied by a photograph captioned: "Earl Milles, who has been cutting hair for 73 years in Lexington, has a group of faithful customers, some of whom have come to his shop for their whole lives."
From "Backroads Indiana" by Wendell Trogdon, The Highlander Press, 1994.
Lexington
CAN'T STOP WORKING
It is soon obvious Lexington is an old town. Rustic-looking "Welcome to Lexington, A Pioneer Town" signs greet visitors at Ind. 356 and Ind. 203.
"Settled in 1804, Planed in 1813," another marker boasts. A historical plaque notes that The Western Eagle, the second newspaper in the Indiana Territory, was printed in Lexington from 1815 to 1816. Yet another sign recalls the incursion by Gen. John Hunt Morgan's Confederate raiders, who stayed overnight in Lexington on July 10, 1863, before leaving for Vernon. A wooden street sign marks the comer of Mulberry and Main. Old houses are built near the streets, a reminder of an earlier time.
A food mart, a minute mart, a service station, a few other businesses and the post office are open. So is the barber shop where Earl Milles awaits customers.
Milles was 92 a few day ago (March 25, 1993) but he doesn't look a day over 70. Except for three years when he barbered in Henryville, he has been around Lexington his entire life, 72 of those years as a barber. Five generations of Lexington men have been his customers.
"I cut hair for quite a few women when I first started, but almost all of them go to beauty parlors now. Oh, I still cut a few," he says.
He charged 25 cents for a haircut back in the 1920s, then raised the price to 50 cents later despite protests of some men. "They got over it," he says. And no one complains about the $4 he now charges. It's about half what they'd pay at other shops.
"The days of a shave and a haircut are about over. I don't average over five or six shaves a week, and I'm glad of it," he confesses.
Milles went to high school in Lexington, "two years, all they had back then. I would have had to go to Charlestown if I wanted to graduate.
"Rather than that, I attended a barber school in Indianapolis and took up the barber trade when I was 19. I came back here, I guess, because it was my hometown. I used to know everyone here, but not anymore. Most of the oldtimers are gone. I'm about the oldest one left.
"My doctor tells me to keep on working, because that's what keeps me going. Oh, I have a little trouble, but nothing serious."
He doesn't mind that he isn't as busy as he once was: "I just give the old-time haircuts and the young people don't like those. I don't mess with haircuts with initials and other designs."
He is at the shop six days a week, except some Wednesdays. "I close then, if I have anything to do," he says.
Lexington, like barbering, has changed. "I recall when there were five grocery stores here and they all did a good business. That street over there was solid with buildings," he says.
"What's the name of that street?" he repeats a question. "I'm not sure. When you are here 92 years, you don't need to know the street names."
He recalls when the town had a canning factory, a sawmill, a hardware store, a bank. Farm people would bring their eggs and chickens to town and go around to see which store would pay the most for them.
"Back then, people would drive into town in horse-drawn buggies and the streets would be so muddy they'd have to throw boards onto the street to keep them from going knee deep in mud."
He thinks for a while. "Nobody had any money then, but it seemed like everyone got along well," he observes.
Even the barbershop conversations have changed. "There used to be a lot of talk about hunting and fishing," he reports. "Now it's mostly politics. I don't get mixed up in it. I got friends on both sides, so I can't say much."
He does get involved in community service, giving haircuts at the retirement center. "There used to be 21 men there. Now there are only two, so I guess my haircuts killed them all off," he says, a twinkle in his eye.
"An old fellow who has been there for 24 years thought I deserved a birthday party, and he made them give me one," Milles said, showing a clipping of a story from the Scott County Journal about the occasion.
Milles' wife, Aletha Muriel, died in 1991, two months short of their 70th anniversary. Their two daughters, Earlene Kleopfer and Flora Jean Kleopfer, married brothers. Flora Jean, who lives just outside Lexington, checks on him once a day and Earlene calls from down in Louisiana about once a week.
And James E. Kleopfer, Jr., the Scott County circuit court judge who is Earlene’s son, lives with his grandfather. "He never married. I reckon he's had so many divorce cases, he knows better," Milles laughs.
Age hasn't stopped Milles from driving. He reports, "I was at the license branch getting plates earlier this year when the examiner heard me say that I would have to wait for new glasses [after a cataract operation]. He asked me to read the fifth line on the letter chart. I read it right off. He says, 'Let's go for your driving test.' I drove for a few blocks and he says, 'Go on back to the branch and I'll give you your new license.'
"He did tell me to wear my new glasses to drive when I got them. Anyhow, I can drive for three more years, but I don't drive at night.
"I told the examiner that I don't drive much, just to go to the grocery store and doctor. He said, 'You stop at the most expensive places you can find,"' Milles recalls, laughing at the remark. "He was right."
Earl Milles is worth a longer visit, but it is time to go. Outside, a slight drizzle is falling. It does not dampen the enthusiasm of students romping during recess at the grade school. Earl Milles can look out his window and wonder what Lexington will be like when they are 92.
America's Oldest Barber Retires
Earl Milles, the son of Emma Hollenbeck and George Washington Milles, retired from barbering recently (November 1997) at the age of 96. Although his mind and sense of humor are as sharp as ever, he had to give up his profession of many years because of failing eyesight. He now resides in a retirement home and he loves to receive mail. His new address is :
Westminster Village, Apt. 3218
2200 Greentree North
Clarksville, IN 47130
From "Lexington" by Mary Wilson and Sharon Y. Asher, published sometime after 1975.
EARL MILLES - BARBER
Earl Milles was born in Lexington Township on March 25, 1901, the son of George W. and Emma Hollenbeck Milles. He attended school in Lexington and married the former Aletha Muriel Hall on September 28, 1921 and they have two daughters -- Earlene M. Kleopfer of Florida and Flora Jean Kleopfer of Greenwood, Indiana. Mr. Milles served two terms as Lexington Township Trustee from 1947 to 1954.
During, the 1930's he started barbering in Lexington and has had a shop located on the public square next to the James house which is also his home since the 1940's.
For photographs see Earl Milles 1996 , Earl Milles and Grandson , and Earl and Muriel Milles .