FALMOUTH – At the beginning of the pandemic when former Falmouth Selectman Adrian C.J. (‘Andy’ to all who know him) Dufresne was 89 years old, he closed his longtime business, Andy’s Barber Shop, and ostensibly retired.
There was even a feature story in the Boston Globe, and another on Channel 25 News in Boston. He had been in the same corner spot in the Falmouth Plaza for 57 years. It was the end of an era.
Two years later, Dufresne, who began working as an apprentice in his father’s Falmouth barber shop at 13 years old, has a new job cutting hair in the Main Street Barber Shop. Today, May 20, is his 91st birthday. He was at work.
Andy Dufresne, left, and Main Street Barber owner Silvana Oliveira, right, giving haircuts one recent morning. CAPE COD WAVE PHOTO
“He’s been excellent,” said Silvana Oliveira, the owner of Main Street Barber Shop. “He’s certainly experienced.”
Dufresne has been working at his new job for a couple of weeks. And even before that, he said, “I never missed it in that I never actually stopped.”
He couldn’t really retire. When Andy’s closed, Dufresne took a mobile barber kit around town to give haircuts. Also, he has a barber’s chair set up in his house.
But when the pandemic hit and he closed his barbershop, he found he wasn’t working a lot. He quickly bored of watching television. “My happy hours got earlier and earlier,” he said. “My common sense said I needed to do something.”
One day this spring, with the pandemic easing, he was driving on Main Street when he noticed new decorations in the Main Street Barber Shop. The shop had recently been purchased by Oliveira.
“I walked in the shop to commend them on the decorations,” he said. A conversation ensued. And he was hired.
Happy 91st Birthday!
On the morning of his 91st birthday, Dufresne said he had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for that afternoon “to find out if I’m going to be alive the rest of my life,” he joked.
Before his doctor’s appointment, he had a shift to pull at Main Street Barber Shop. “Of course I’m working,” he said. “I’ve always worked.”
Born To Cut Hair
Dufresne’s father, who was from Canada, was a widower who moved to Falmouth in 1928, where he met and married Dufresne’s mother. His father and his father’s four brothers were all barbers.
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