There’s no telling how many clients beautician MaryNell McConathy has seen after 70 years behind the chair. McConathy, who now works at New Image Salon in Weatherford, began her first day Aug. 15, 1974, after completing beauty school in Fort Worth.
“I was scared to death,” McConathy said, sitting down for an interview Wednesday, the day before her clients, colleagues, family and friends celebrated her career milestone. “The first lady I did was someone I’d known all my life. “We had rollers, this machine .
.. you’d roll the roller up, then put a little tube in there to dry it.
About the time I’d get it up there, it would roll off and hit the floor.” That first three months, she said, were her make-or-break period. “I kept asking every Saturday, are you still going to need me Monday?” she said.
As it turned out, McConathy would be just fine in the occupation that was clearly meant for her. “From the time I was old enough to talk, I either wanted to be a nurse or a beauty operator,” she said. “My oldest sister made a nurse and would write home telling us things, and I decided I didn’t want to be a nurse.
So that’s the reason I went to the beauty shop.” Not including a two-year stint where she moved to Irving due to her husband’s job, McConathy made her mark at various beauty shops around Weatherford before settling at New Image three years ago. She tried her hand at doing nails — she didn’t like it — as well as management — “And I hated it,” she said — but always came back to hair.
And along the way, the Poolville native made lifelong friends from longtime regular clients, including Nell Binion, whom she’d serviced for 60 some-odd years before Binion’s passing last year. “We would meet at the beauty shop at 5:30, do her hair, then she’d go home and catch a ride to [General Dynamics],” McConathy recalled. “Even when she ended up in a rest home in Fort Worth, her daughter would come in and bring her to get perms.
” Following Binion’s passing, McConathy did her hair prior to the service, something she’s done several times for others. “A lot of people don’t care to do that, but I feel that’s a last thing you can do for them,” she said. Mary Jo Jordan has been a client and friend of McConathy’s as long as she can remember.
“She did my mother’s hair at one time,” Jordan said. “She’s just one of the best persons on this earth, as sweet as she can be. Just a good person and a good hairdresser.
” Jordan still comes in to see her every other week. Fellow New Image stylist Cindy Gomillion has been working the chair next to McConathy since her move to Weatherford in the early 1970s. “There’s so many things to mention — she’s a nurturer, a mother figure, she’s everything,” Gomillion said.
“You can depend on her for anything and everything and you learn a lot just from watching her. “I’ve learned a lot from her, not just about hair but in life.” The beauty industry has changed quite a bit since McConathy’s time in beauty school, when students learned haircutting lessons by watching the instructor up on the stage.
“And they would mix up the tint, so we had to learn all that after,” she said. Foils, used for highlights and coloring, weren’t used back then. Back-combing, or teasing, was nonexistent and razor cuts were not allowed.
“We rolled the top, pin-curled the side and finger-waved the back,” McConathy said of traditional hairstyles. “And the haircuts were called four-way cuts.” At one point during a particularly busy season at a salon on South Main, the stylist ended up doing 18 appointments in one day.
“I started at 5:30 and got out about 5 p.m.” she said.
Now, she’s down to three days a week, though she will come in on a Thursday if she needs to. That flexible schedule, in being able to plan a day’s work around any family activities, is something that kept McConathy working the whole time her four boys were in school. “They all played sports and my husband worked nights for six years at General Dynamics,” she said.
“I’d still get them to their ballgames. and there were some Saturdays I’d get out — and during the week, too — to keep score at games. “The parents all pitched in and helped back then.
” Now, that same flexibility allows her to cherish time spent with eight grandkids and 12 great grandchildren. On the verge of turning 90 next May — though you’d never guess it by looking at her — McConathy has no plans to retire. “As long as I can get out of bed, I’m gonna keep coming,” she said.
And that work ethic, along with a little sage advice, is something McConathy is able to pass on to others in the industry. “Just keep at it because it does take time — that’s what I tell these little young girls,” she said. “Just keep it up, because I did for three months.
“And I don’t regret it, not one bit.”.
