Dwight Helstrom is Presque Isle’s longest-serving barber, with 50 years in the trade, and has no plans of retiring soon.
Helstrom started cutting hair in Presque Isle 50 years ago this July, and has been doing it ever since, mostly under the name of Dwight’s Barbershop.
“Everybody asks me about quitting, but I have no plans for retirement, not as long as my health keeps up. I guess I enjoy it too much,” Helstrom said.
“I have had some issues” — a heart attack at age 40 and and orthopedic back screws — “but I’m lucky enough to feel well and carry on.”
Helstrom grew up in Perham and went to barber school in Lewiston after high school. At age 19, he settled in Presque Isle, where he moved through a variety of businesses and locations.
“I felt that people needed some kind of a trade in life, and I felt that I’m kind of a people person,” Helstrom said. “When I first came to town in 66, there were 12 barbers. I used to be the youngest, and now I’m the only and the oldest.”
Traditional barbershops have long focused on men, while these days numerous hairstyling businesses cater to men and women, or mostly to women in the case of salons. Helstrom recalls being a longtime part of the community, making friends with customers over multiple generations of families and taking in a bird’s-eye view of the changes to Presque Isle’s downtown.
Helstrom started his career at Herman Daigle’s on Main Street in 1966. In 1968, he joined Luke Wieder’s Barbershop next to the Braden Theater on Main Street and soon took over the shop when Wieder became a full-time sheriff.
In 1971, with his brother Sterling as a newly-trained barber and partner, Helstrom purchased another barbershop business at the Northeastland Hotel, along with chrome barber chairs that are still in use today and were originally brought to Presque Isle by the Italian immigrant Vincent Barresi in 1932.
The Helstrom brothers moved back to the Braden Theatre location in 1986, and Dwight Helstrom remained there after Sterling’s 1995 retirement. In 2000 he moved to his current location two doors down on Main Street, and today he is helped by another part-time barber, Wendy Kingsbury of Bridgewater.
Helstrom is still friends with his first client, 85-year-old Roscoe McIntosh, whose hair he cut in July of 1966 at Herman Daigle’s State Street barbershop. McIntosh used to operate the M&S Office Products Store in Presque Isle and checks in with Helstrom from his home at the Leisure Village apartments.
Dwight’s Barbershop will host a weeklong open house Aug. 12-20.
