Thomas Cremeans is the sole owner of the Ashland Barbershop. A business that’s been a Lexington staple for 120 years and has been owned by the Cremeans family for about 53 of those years. It was first located downtown near Broadway next to the Village Idiot, an old pub off Short Street that is still standing today. At first, the barbershop was like many other in its time in the early 1900s — part of a hotel. The Old Drake Hotel.
Thomas says the Old Drake Hotel was “kinda infamous” for its wild side. Some barbers and bartenders ran book out of the shop and hotel bar, and the hotel was notorious for offering prostitutes as well. Eventually, the shop left the Drake for greener pastures, and wound up as part of several other hotels under its initial owner George Fatch. Fatch sold the barbershop to a man named Red Kelly later on, but he remained a customer of the shop. According to Thomas Cremeans, Fatch’s grandson and great grandson still come into the shop to get their haircuts.
Red Kelly finally moved the shop away from downtown and into its own building at the current location right near the corner of Ashland and Euclid — in the “Chevy Chase” portion of Lexington. In the mid-1960s, Thomas’ father began working as a barber at several spots around town, including the Ashland Barbershop. In 1967, his father came into an agreement with Mr. Kelly to buy the barbershop over the course of a year while he was working there. By 1968, the Barbershop was finally owned by a Cremeans, and it hasn’t left the family since.
That same year, 1968, Thomas’ older brother Richard “Richie” Cremeans was born. Thomas was the baby of the family, born more than a decade after his brother in the early 1980s. As his older brother grew, the Cremeans’ mother went to barber college and to work as a barber in the family shop. When Richie was old enough to attend barber college, he followed in the family line of barbers and began working at the shop as well.
When baby Thomas reached his college years in the early 2000s, he hesitated a bit to join the family business. His father actually suggested that Thomas try to find his own way in life, to perhaps aspire to do something other than barbering. But Thomas eventually enrolled in Bailey’s Barber College — the same school his mother and brother attended — and became a barber just like the rest of his family after initially doubting whether he wanted to cut hair for a career.
“I ended up loving it,” he said. He caught on quickly and hasn’t looked back ever since.
A few years after Thomas started full-time, his father retired and handed the business over to he and Richie. Their mother continued cutting hair for another eight or ten years and had to retire after a heart attack just a few years ago. She recovered but decided to hang up the scissors for good following the health scare.
So it was Thomas and Richie on their own. Cutting hair, telling stories and maintaining the family atmosphere of the Ashland barbershop. Then, hardship struck in consecutive March’s. In March 2020, COVID-19 destroyed local businesses, including the Ashland Barbershop. They were forced to shut down for a months-long stretch but luckily were able to qualify for some of the COVID relief benefits. Even with the benefits, there was fear of having to shut down or sell the shop.
Early in 2021, though, business ramped back up with people beginning to take their vaccines and feel more comfortable coming back into places like their local barbershop. Good times didn’t return for long, though. In March of 2021, Richie Cremeans suffered a heart attack and died suddenly and surprisingly. That left just Thomas to run things at the shop. A barbershop that was finally getting most of its business back following the pandemic.
“It was really hard…having to tell 30, 40 people a day the story of my brother,” Thomas said. In the middle of a business boom Thomas was having to work overtime in the wake of his brother’s passing. For many people, going to work can be a way to get way from something tragic, a way to get your mind off of what happened. But for Thomas, work was a constant reminder that his brother, the man who ran the family business with him, was gone.
(His obituary below, for those that are interested. ALSO, you can find what some friends and customers had to say in the comments section at this link)
His customer base was there for him. Thomas said that for weeks he had customers bringing him food and wishing him well. Always offering a helping hand or a friend to talk to in his time of need. Thomas said those sort of actions from his customers “really helped renew my faith in humanity.” He was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from his clientele. It helped him reflect after a year of COVID and divide in the world to realize that “there are some really, really great people in this world.” That he’s “extremely blessed with the customer base that comes in.”
Despite losing his brother, Thomas plans to keep owning and working at the shop for at least the next 20 years, when he hopefully can retire. To him, the barbershop is a way to honor his retired parents and his passed brother. The Cremeans family has always been about two things: family and cutting hair, in some order.
If you’d like to listen to my entire one-hour interview with Thomas to hear the entire backstory and listen to some of the funniest barbershop stories you’ll ever hear, you can check out this link.
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