Hunt Co., TX - News: 'Easier' Road Led to Career
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'Easier' Road Led to Career
    Celeste--Lenna Bell Compton Barr, proprietor of Lenna's Beauty Shop in
downtown Celeste, has a simple answer to the question of why she started the
shop with her sister on August 18, 1945.
    "Those were cotton picking days in the Hickory Creek community where I was
born," she said.  "I figured running a beauty shop would be easier."
    Almost on a whim, Lenna Compton went with her sister, Francis Compton, now
Francis Woodruff, to Dallas with a friend to attend Neilson's Beauty School in
Dallas.  Lenna also attended the Isabel University of Beauty Culture in
Lubbock.  Earning her license required 1,000 hours of training over six months
and cost about one hundred dollars.
    Their parents, Christopher Columbus "Lum" Compton and Belvan Mulkey
Compton, paid their way despite his opinion that beauty operators didn't amount
to much.  Before getting into the hairdressing business, she nurtured a love of
drawing and painting and considered being an artist.  Her father's fear that
she would be a "starving artist" extended to his idea about hairdressers.
    The sisters opened Compton's Beauty Shop and about two years later, Francis
was married and left it to Lenna.  Just as she hoped, the business, still in
its original location, was a success and has been her living for forty years.
    Some of her fifty-sixty regular customers have been with her from the
start, when a shampoo and set cost fifty cents.  Almost all her customers today
are senior citizens and she tried to keep her prices low so they can afford
them.
    She is "retirement age" herself, but can't bring herself to quit...and her
customers, she said, wouldn't let her anyway.
    "I don't keep up with all the young styles, and I don't have to cut
children's hair," she said.  "I enjoy all my customers as friends probably more
than I enjoy the work, although that is a pleasure.  I looks so easy that some
of my customers have tired to cut their own hair at home and come back and
said, 'Oh, look what I've done to my hair,' and get me to fix it."
    Picture caption:  Since 1945--Lenna Barr, who opened Compton's Beauty Shop
in Celeste in the final month of WWII, is now the longest-running business
owner in town.   (Staff photo)  (Undated clipping)
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