By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Marian Anderson's patience has been rewarded.
She's home, relocating her Kuts 2 Go salon for men, women and children from the corner of 28 4th St. at Cedar in Niles to 103 Commercial St. in her hometown.
Anderson opened at noon Wednesday in the former Kevin Martin's carpet store, which opened Feb. 6, 2006, behind Underwood Shoe Store.
Her hours will be Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, noon to 8 p.m., and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
She's open until 8 "to get some of those working people who don't have a chance to get their hair cut when they get off work."
Anderson, who worked at the former We Care Hair in Silver Creek Plaza during her 30-year career, always seemed destined to be a stylist since she got a German doll with authentic hair growing up on Halstead Street.
She remembers her patient mother Mary Lee Anderson, 87, encouraging Marian when she combed and styled her long, black hair.
"I've wanted this building for about four years," she said. "It was always taken. Martin's beat me to it the last time. I happened to be driving by and saw it vacant and I said, 'My building is empty, let me go see Tom' (Underwood). I wanted (the space which has also been a jewelry store and doughnut shop) for my beauty shop."
Anderson graduated from Union High School in 1968 with Olympic wrestler Chris Taylor. Her brother Richard, DUHS Class of 1969, was a counselor at Fitch Camp with Taylor.
Richard this summer became "the first African American eighth-degree black-belt master in the world," she said of her brother in Little Rock.
"I told him he needs to come back here to downtown Dowagiac. Everything's here except for a karate school, so he needs to come back home. He started in the backyard. There were four boys and three girls. My sister's here. I have a disabled brother who lives with my mother. That's another reason I want to move back" to Dowagiac from Niles.
Richard Anderson on Father's Day weekend in June was honored by a television station as "Arkansan of the Week" for being a man with one child of his own who impacted hundreds of others by getting them off the street, keeping them out of trouble and into a taekwondo uniform.
Her brother was a highly successful martial arts instructor and business owner running five taekwondo centers in Michiana until God made a different plan for the former Chieftain athletic standout. He went to Little Rock in the early '90s to be part of the solution to a gang problem.
Besides taekwondo, Anderson and his volunteers for the past 15 years have taught kids reading, math and science.
He aims them toward college, puts Bible verses inside their belts and offers free Monday practices when they go to church on Sunday.
Marian characterizes Kuts 2 Go this way: "I cut hair and give perms for all textures of hair, African American and Caucasian. Color. Relaxer. Highlights. I cut men's hair, do beards and mustaches, as well as women and children."
Relaxer straightens hair.
"(Whites) put curl in your hair," Anderson laughed. "Mine is kind of straight. If I didn't have a relaxer, I'd have an Afro. (Blacks) take the curl out of our hair. Isn't that something? Skin color doesn't matter. It's the hair that I do. I cut wigs, too, because a lot of women buy them and don't like them because they're too long or too thick. I cut my own hair. Wheelchair-bound people are welcome."
Her salon also offers jewelry handmade by two Niles women.
"At one time I couldn't walk" because of breaking her neck in an accident, she said. "I was sort of paralyzed. About two weeks ago, minding my own business, I got hit by a car," aggravating her old injury.
In 1970, Anderson followed other family members to Ohio, where she attended Nationwide Beauty Academy in Columbus.
She not only graduated with honors, "I was the only person in my class who got 100-percent – didn't miss a question – on our final exam. They didn't want to tell me for fear I'd get a big head. I was the oldest one in the class, fresh out of high school. There I was, I had been out of school 10 years before I went to beauty school."
Anderson previously worked at a warehouse in Columbus, filling Radio Shack orders.
"One day I bent over and couldn't stand back up," she said. "I knew right then I couldn't do that kind of (lifting "giant speakers") work the rest of my life. It took two or three people to push the big carts. I was dating a guy who was a hair stylist, and I always loved doing hair.
"When I was little, my mother would sit down on the floor. I would comb her hair for hours on end and fix different styles. Every time I showed her the mirror, she would say, 'Oh, yes, it's pretty.' I didn't have a doll until one day, somehow, I got a little German doll with human hair. Other dolls had synthetic hair you couldn't do anything with. She was a cute little thing, and I could do everything to her hair – I could wash it, dry it. My mother let me pull a chair up to the stove and I would take the hot iron, curl that hair and fix her a style. I'd do it over and over. I always loved doing hair. That was my calling. As I got older, I started pulling kids off the street, cutting and braiding their hair. Linda Bass Johnson (who passed away Sept. 2, 2004) was my best friend and she was the first real person I did a haircut on. It looked really nice."
"Dowagiac is the most beautiful little city I ever saw, compared to others," she observed. "They're trying, but they can't compete with Dowagiac. They spend big money and they can't even touch Dowagiac. (The city Grounds Department) is up early doing the lawns. It looks so nice. I love Dowagiac."
Anderson has worked at Fiesta Hair and Tanning in Niles, Smart Style in the Niles Wal-Mart and Tangles Hair Salon in Niles.
When she competed in hair competitions in Chicago and in Merrillville, Ind., Anderson remembers sweeping the awards.
"I won everything," she relishes the memory. "I won in haircuts, permanents, the total look and the hairstyle. Nobody got anything but me. That's a good feeling. The other one, I came in second place."
Whether it's Pauline Murray with three grandchildren in tow or electrician Rudy Klobucar, a former city councilman, Marion seems to know everyone who enters her shop opening day.