Charlotte’s beloved ‘Duke Energy barber’ dies at 95
As uptown Charlotte rose up around its early businesses, Duke Energy unfolded around its own community center: Kiser’s Barbershop, the place in the corner of the Duke Energy building where blue-collar workers and CEOs sat alongside each other for haircuts and advice from a local legend.
J.B. Kiser died Feb. 21, leaving behind 95 years’ worth of tight-knit family and appreciative customers.
Kiser, born in 1926, grew up with nine siblings in Gaston County. After serving in the Army during World War II and studying barbering in Durham, he married Mary Lou Kiser in 1947 and whisked his bride to Charlotte. In the Queen City, they grew both a family and an uptown community hub.
In 1948, Kiser began work at a barbershop in the corner of the Duke Energy building. He bought the storefront in the 1960s, and by his 1998 retirement the businessmen of uptown knew him as “the Duke Energy Barber.”
“Barbering was just part of the job,” Kiser told a reporter in 1997. “You have to know how to talk, when to talk, and how to meet people. You’ve got to know a little bit about a lot of subjects – become an expert at nothing.”
‘He was too valuable’
When leaders planned to renovate Duke’s historic headquarters on South Church Street, former Duke Energy CEO Bill Grigg remembers leaders considered reclaiming the building’s corner from the barbershop.
“Do we really need a barbershop in the building?” Grigg remembers thinking. “Well, no, we can walk down the street or anywhere else uptown for a cut – but we need J.B.”
The shop stayed.
“He knew virtually every man in the building,” Grigg said. “He was an institution down there.”
And though Kiser never revealed his own political leanings or Duke gossip, Grigg said he was a trusted adviser to the company’s leaders.
“He didn’t mind telling me I wasn’t doing what I should be doing,” Grigg said. “He was a sort of counselor; people came to J.B. when they would have things on their minds.”
But even after taking charge as CEO, Grigg never tried to coax Kiser into taking a job at Duke.
“He was too valuable where he was,” Grigg said.
Duke Energy’s archive includes an account from a customer who said Kiser offered him free haircuts after he was laid off from his job. Kiser’s daughter, Deborah Kiser Cornwell, recalls her father shearing Black customers in the 1960s, when much of Charlotte remained effectively segregated.
‘Everybody I wait on is famous’
Kiser’s influence extended beyond Duke Energy, and even Charlotte city limits.
When Duke CEO William S. Lee visited Washington, D.C., for a business council meeting, he brought a message from Kiser to Bill Clinton: an offer to cut the president’s hair aboard Air Force One during his upcoming visit to Charlotte. Clinton would touch down in the Queen City in March 1994 to watch his beloved Arkansas Razorbacks narrowly beat Duke for the March Madness title.
“He was somewhat amused, but really brightened when I told him that you had been my pulse of public opinion for more than thirty years,” Lee wrote in a letter to Kiser.
When Lee further described the barber, he wrote, Clinton snatched a pen and scouted for paper to write Kiser a personal note.
Kiser’s family still has the Park Hyatt Hotel menu on which the former president scrawled an enthusiastic note to the Duke Energy barber:
“JB – I’ll be in Charlotte with the Razorbacks!”
Kiser – an avid Duke Blue Devils fan – never actually cut the president’s hair. But he sheared plenty of uptown Charlotte’s storied heads, including each of the Duke CEOs who led the company before Kiser’s retirement, save that of founder James B. Duke.
When a writer penning a 45th anniversary profile for Duke’s internal magazine asked Kiser who was the most famous person he’d barbered, he shot back: “Everybody I wait on is famous.”
A quiet retirement
In 1997, nearly 50 years after moving into the Duke building, Kiser announced that he’d sell his shop. He wanted to spend more time with his family, he said, and passed the hallowed corner space to another barber who promised to keep the Kiser name for awhile.
When Kiser officially retired, Mayor Pat McCrory proclaimed Dec. 10, 1998 a city-wide holiday to honor his barbershop’s legacy in the uptown Charlotte community.
Without haircuts to tend to, Kiser spent his time with his other communities: a growing family that includes three grandchildren and three great-grandsons, a tight-knit congregation at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, and the Freemasons.
St. Mark’s Rev. Timothy McKenzie said Kiser, a longtime member, would bring vegetables from his garden and leave them in the choir room for congregants to share every week.
“He enjoyed sharing his abundance with others,” McKenzie said.
