The Life Narrative of Sharon Mirtaheri

            I was born and raised in Radford Virginia and went to grade school at Kuhn Barnett on Second Street in Radford until third grade when we moved out into the more rural area of Childress. I attended Bethel Elementary until seventh grade when the class was transferred to Auburn Junior High and High School where I graduated in 1977.  In tenth grade I started a vocational educational program at Christiansburg High school and was bused there a half day tenth through twelfth grade. I took the three year cosmetology program and took my state boards on my birthday; May second, and had my license when I graduated high school.

            My families on both sides have lived in this area of the Appalachian Mountains for over a hundred and fifty years. My father’s side was Montgomerys from Scotland, supposedly aristocrats, and the county here and in Maryland (where I used to live) are named after my ancestors on that side. They were mostly alcoholics and violent and not much good telling there. My mother’s side of the family is Simpkinses and Quessenburys. They were from Germany and England and cabinet makers. There is also some Cherokee from Indian Valley Virginia and I am extremely proud of that heritage. My great, great, great grandmother, Bell Quessenbury, was full blooded Cherokee as told by my mother’s father. No one else in the family would admit to this however because they are ashamed of it. You only had to look at my grandfather to see it. I have her straight hair and slanted eyes and was called “fat jap” in school because of it. I choose to identify with her and give her the characteristics of persistence and determination and feistiness. I choose those characteristics because she looked the part in the photograph I have of her and she survived having fourteen children, including three sets of twins. We all need heroines.

            I lived a life of fear growing up. The ole man was mostly drunk and always violent when he was. I am currently writing a book about my life. I want it to inspire others in similar situations to understand they have the power to change their lives. I want it to be a book about hope and optimism. My mother died at forty eight when I was twenty four of a connective tissue disease that affected her heart but I truly believe a life of beatings from him shortened her life.

            I got married the first time the day after my sixteenth birthday. I was not in love really but wanted out of the hell that was home. It lasted two years and I left him two weeks before I graduated high school. I had jumped from the frying pan into the fire so to speak. My first job was for Marguerite Snidow in Blacksburg, the most prestigious salon there. She had judged a hair competition I was in twelfth grade and although I did not win she told me to call her when I graduated. I knew I had the job. I worked for her for three years and in that time she groomed me to do her well heeled clients when she was on vacation or traveling with her husband, Judge Snidow, on work related trips. Professor’s wives from VPI and lawyers and doctors wives were her clients.

            When I left my first husband I had to move back in with my parents. It was a place to sleep. I got a part time job after the salon closed in a dime store so I would not have to go home till the ole man was in bed, to avoid him. I met an engineering student from Iran that summer and fell in love this time and we were married the following summer. When he finished his Ph.d in engineering we moved to Gaithersburg Maryland for his job with Bectel. I could not wait to get out of the area to the big city and do progressive hairstyling. Our marriage lasted nine years. I do not regret it and would do it all again even knowing how it would end. I grew up into a pretty headstrong person. Not what he wanted in a wife and he also began to practice his religion, Islam, which became more of a problem, He wanted to go home. Towards the end it got pretty ugly. He had moved me to York Pennsylvania right after Ma died which was definitely the wrong time to make a change. I started entering hair fashion magazines and competitions and won a bunch and was published internationally and my confidence soared. He didn’t like that much either. So I left him and moved back to Gaithersburg to work in the salon that I had loved. Because of my childhood I do not believe in being a martyr. What had it got my mother?  The interesting thing is we stayed friends for at least six years before he entered an arranged marriage and went back to Iran. He would drive two hours down from York to get haircuts every month.

            I was single for four years and met Koran on a blind date and twelve days later he asked me to marry him. I said yes because I recognized a God when I saw it. We have been married eighteen years and I have what the whole world is looking for. It actually does exist! I retired four years ago for a few reasons. I had been having, for years, some pretty bad pain in my neck and shoulders and I also had developed asthma due to the chemicals in the salon. I had always had contact allergies to the chemicals and never did hair color because of it. I spent fourteen Christmas Eve’s in a row at the emergency room with pneumonia! Basically chemical poisoning! I finally had to have right rotator cuff surgery and never was able to work full time afterwards. I quit my job a year after the surgery. The other shoulder will have to be done eventually. But I also had an emotionally painful event happen in the salon… a betrayal. Two sisters owned the salon but two of their other sisters worked there as well and a sister-in-law. I had been the owner’s first employee and we had worked together in another salon before she opened hers. Over twenty years together and I considered them family and would have died for them. The evil sister decided she did not like the fact we were so close and would end it. It is amazing the wickedness one person can set out to do and accomplish if they wish too. She did something pretty bad to me and they took her side. Blood is thicker than water.

            So I decided to come home. It was the most difficult time of my life and after playing therapist to clients for thirty years I had to seek one out myself. I had not only left a job I loved and excelled in, I had left over two hundred clients, most of which I did for over twenty years, behind. They were like family to me. Although I stay in touch with dozens of them it just is not the same as sharing their lives once a month. While unpacking and trying to figure out what I wanted my new life to be I took some household items and paintings I had done, too large for my house, to the Roanoke Rescue Mission. I met Lee Clark who took me on a tour of the new Women’s Shelter Building not yet opened. I mentioned I had been a stylist and he informed me that two stylists came once a month to cut hair there but they had no salon. With my physical problems I could not imagine doing twenty four heads of hair, as they do in five hours, without a hydraulic chair. I had shivers running up and down my spine when I asked if they had room for a salon in the new building. He thought so and I knew what I wanted to try to accomplish. I was waiting to live in the area one year so I could get in state tuition thinking I would go to Virginia Western. God had other plans. I spent five months going to one hundred salons asking help in making a salon inside the Mission a reality. The outpouring of my fellow stylist’s generosity was beyond overwhelming. It was a miracle. In the process equipment for a five chair salon was donated by six different salons and six thousand dollars worth of product to get us started and share with Shelter guests.  Our first May 2005 cut-a-thon raised six thousand dollars which went to build the salons. “Angels with Scissors” was born. One hundred and forty stylists and forty threes salons strong and two corporate sponsors!!! We also have thirteen stylists that spend a half day a month working cutting hair. The dream now exists! A three chair salon in the Women’s shelter and a two chair salon in the Men’ Shelter.

             When I am done at Hollins it is my hearts desire to grow “Angels with Scissors” here in the area. My really big dream is to see it become national! I also would like to start a program of the same nature with local artists: “Angels with Art” to also do a yearly fundraiser for the Mission and then there is this terrific idea of my Angel Biscotti recipe for a stream of revenue for the mission; kinda like Paul Newman did.

            My best friend of twenty eight years who lives here in Salem, heads up Virginia Western’s English department. She talked me into checking into the Horizon Program at Hollins. I was blessed with enough scholarships to make it possible financially to attend. At forty six I started my college journey!  I am so blessed… truly blessed. I have a wonderful husband who provides me with the things money can not buy… love, emotional support in my endeavor at Hollins and with a comfortable life too. I am happy at last… really happy. It took a lot to get to this place. I want to spend the rest of my life helping other people, especially women, get here too! For the first time in my life I have come to understand that Divine Spirit is a better driver than I am and I am letting go of the wheel. I don’t know for sure what the future holds. I just know I want be used as a tool for good. It could be painting, writing, who knows? But it’s certain to be all good!

...