Haley Mathews, 11, donates her hair to charity
Published: December 2, 2005
With her mother and grandmother, 11-year-old Haley Mathews stands stoically, with a hint of nervous anticipation on her face. Her long, dark blond hair has been braided and tied off in a ponytail at Trendie’s Salon. The tip of it reaches the middle of her back. When the scissors come out, her mom Lori Mathews and grandmother Reyburn Baldwin jump into action, snapping pictures and recording video. This is a big day. People will look at Haley differently tomorrow.
“Are you ready?” asks hairdresser Emilee Speaks.
“Yeah,” says Haley.
Speaks cuts through Haley’s braided hair and then hands her the ponytail she’s been growing for three years.
The reason Haley’s hair is in a neatly braided lock clutched in her hand and not in a feathery pile on the floor of Trendie’s is simple charity. Haley is donating her 10-inch ponytail to Locks of Love, a volunteer, non-profit organization that gives hairpieces to financially disadvantaged kids who have lost their hair.
The Lake Worth, Fla. organization was founded by Madonna Coffman in 1997. In her mid-20s, Coffman (a cardiac nurse) developed alopecia areta, an auto-immune disorder that causes the body to attack hair folicles, eventually causing baldness. Alopecia can be genetically transmitted and 15 years later Coffman’s 4-year-old daughter lost her hair as well.
Roughly 4.7 million Americans develop alopecia, and it is the most common ailment of Locks of Love hairpiece recipients.
Locks of Love grew out of bits of donated hair Coffman collected and stored in her garage. Now, the organization has participating salons across the nation - about 200 of them in Missouri.
The hairpieces Locks of Love provide free would cost between $3,500 and $6,000 to buy. Haley’s bundle of fine, dark blond hair will join five other bundles to make a single hairpiece. Because the hairpiece manufacturing process discards a significant amount of each hair bundle donated, the organization requires all donations be at least 10 inches long.
As Speaks trims and evens out Haley’s hair, she praises Haley’s bravery and compassion. Haley heard about Locks of Love from her aunt, who donated hair. Speaks has only done four Locks of Love donation cuts.
“It’s a big step for people,” she says.
Even for hairdressers, dramatic reductions in hair length can be fraught with anguish, especially with kids involved.
“It’s like an extra limb,” she says. “It’s a very big cry-situation.”
A few feet away, Sarah Forman is finishing a manicure. She knows about Locks of Love, too. For her wedding, she required that her future father-in-law cut his lengthy locks, and the proceeds were donated to the organization.
Forman said he wasn’t put off by her wedding day restrictions.
“He said (donating to Locks of Love) was why he was growing it out in the first place.”
When it’s all done and Haley’s hair is just above her shoulders, Speaks hands Haley a mirror to inspect her handiwork. Haley smiles nervously. She misses her long hair, but is pleased with her new do.
She gets out of her chair and shakes off the wisps of hair tickling her neck. Her detached ponytail is nowhere to be found, until she turns around and finds it on the chair where she sat. She picks it up and poses. Her mother and her grandmother snap the bookend “after” pictures of Wednesday’s adventure.
Not accustomed to having a thick hunk of her own hair in her hand, she finds the subtle black and red highlights that shade her hair.
“Ooh! It looks black!” she tells her mother and grandmother.
Before she leaves, Haley has some advice on just how to wear her hair best. She was particularly pleased with a recent class photo.
“I curled it at the ends and pulled it back,” she says.
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