8-year-old donates ponytail to Locks for Love
Published: February 11, 2006
Fidgeting slightly in the waiting room Friday, Megan Bahnmiller felt indifferent about parting with her long, luscious locks.
The 8-year-old decided three and a half years ago to grow her golden-brown hair past her elbows, just so she could chop it off and give the ponytail to Locks of Love.
The nonprofit organization give hairpieces to financially disadvantaged kids suffering from long-term medical hair loss.
But as the moment of truth grew near, Megan grew nervous, afraid that her second-grade classmates at Meadow Lark Elementary would laugh at her new do on Monday.
“Are you excited?” asked Tracy Goodness-Rice, owner of Your Style Hair Designers on 10th Avenue South, as she prepared to make the cut.
“I don’t know,” Megan replied.
It’s a good thing she brought along her best friend Bayley Malloy, 8, for moral support.
“You’ll look pretty,” Bayley said, reassuring her friend.
Megan can take comfort in numbers.
Each week, roughly 2,000 people nationwide donate hair to Locks of Love. Nearly 80 percent of those donations come from children, according to the group’s Web site.
Since 1997, Locks of Love has provided hairpieces to 1,100 children nationwide. It takes six to 10 ponytails to make one wig.
The hairpiece is then provided free of charge or on a sliding fee scale to children who have no hair because of a medical illness.
Wigs run between $500 to $3,000 retail, according to the organization’s Web site.
Megan doesn’t like to think of kids having to go to school without any hair. Her older brother’s friend was diagnosed with cancer.
“She still has to go to school,” Megan said. “If she was bald, people might make fun of her.”
Great Clips hair salons in Great Falls, Butte, Helena, Kalispell, Missoula, Bozeman and Billings offer free haircuts to anyone donating 10 or more inches of their hair to Locks of Love.
Wendy Holets, manager of the Great Clips at the Great Falls Marketplace, sends a bag of collected hair to the nonprofit agency every month. In the last couple of weeks, six people have come to the salon to chop their hair for charity, she said.
A man came in the store recently with hair past his shoulders and wanted to give his ponytail to Locks for Love, she said. Another time, Holets saw a woman donate 22 inches.
“It’s a very popular thing,” Holets said “It’s a great, inspirational thing to do.”
“Virgin hair” is what Locks of Love wants, Holets said. That is unbleached, uncolored, unpermed hairpieces at least 10 inches in length.
The ponytails need to be 10 inches long because most wigs go to girls, and most choose long hair.
But not Megan. Not now, at least. She’s more interested in bobbing her hair similar to the way her china doll’s hair is bobbed.
Bayley got to help chop her friend’s 12-inch ponytail.
“That was your hair,” Bayley said, holding the chunk of hair for Megan to see. “You look pretty.
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