Jeff Harris cuts a client’s hair at Ye Olde Head Shoppe in May 2021. The longtime Greenfield businessman and volunteer died last week at age 69.
Daily Reporter file photo
GREENFIELD — Brad Herndon remembers visiting his longtime friend, Jeff Harris, in the hospital recently with their minister.
As they chatted, Harris brought up a project he wanted to do at their church, and began sketching a diagram of a parking lot redesign.
“He always had ideas,” Herndon said. “Here he is battling cancer in the hospital, and all of a sudden he started talking about this project he wants to do.”
That desire to help which endured until the very end of his life defined Harris, according to those who knew and loved him.
Harris, a barber who ran Ye Olde Head Shoppe in Greenfield for over 40 years, died Feb. 16 at age 69 after a battle with melanoma. From cheering on his kids in sports, to helping others around the house with projects, to immersing himself in Rotary Club initiatives, his friends and family remember the unwavering support he showed to them and the community.
Harris graduated from barbering school shortly after graduating from Greenfield-Central High School. ConnieJo Harris, his wife of nearly 50 years, remembers him as a hard worker. When they met, he was pulling night shifts at a gas station so he could learn his trade during the day.
“He wanted to have his own place to cut hair early on in his career,” ConnieJo told the Daily Reporter in an email. “He was driven to make that happen and when we decided to have children, he wanted me to stay home for as long as possible. Since we had no family support in Greenfield, that meant sacrificing a lot and going down to his income solely cutting hair and trying to open his own place.”
That place was Ye Olde Head Shoppe, which he started in 1977.
“Though he was a very good barber, I really feel the relationships he cultivated with his clients were just as important to him as cutting their hair,” ConnieJo said. “His career went back several generations in a lot of Hancock County families. Counting his clients as friends was probably the most important thing to him.”
Harris enjoyed gardening and helping neighbors with projects as well. He was active in men’s fellowship at Greenfield Christian Church, where he also volunteered on community projects and served on church committees.
He was an avid member of the Rotary Club of Greenfield, through which he found plenty of opportunities to fulfill his drive for volunteerism. He ran Apple Day during National Education Week in November each year, when the club delivers apples to Greenfield-Central educators in appreciation of their dedication.
Herndon, a fellow Rotarian, got his hair cut from Jeff Harris since the early 1980s.
“Jeff was very passionate, compassionate, and a very loyal friend,” Herndon said. “He loved God, he loved the church, he loved his wife and his family, he adored his kids and he did so much with them. He loved the community. He always wanted Greenfield to be a better city. He wanted the same for our church and for our Rotary club. I can’t think of anything he didn’t like except for IU’s basketball team losing.”
Rotary catered to Harris’ desire to serve and put others first, Herndon said. He has fond memories of getting apples ready for Apple Day at Harris’ salon. He remembers how much Harris enjoyed raising money for law enforcement agencies to buy Christmas gifts for children, and serving as grill master for the club’s annual Steak’n Bake’n Raffle.
When Herndon was president of the local Rotary club, he remembered Harris asking him before every meeting if there was anything he could do to help the club. Herndon knows his late friend often posed that same question to other presidents as well.
Denise Thompson worked for Harris since 2006 before he passed his business on to her last year and stayed on as a barber. She remembers how caring he was of the staff.
“He’d do anything for you if he could,” Thompson said. “He would go the extra mile.”
The same went for his clients too.
“He had several disabled clients, and if they needed anything, if they needed a weed-eater ran around their house, he would go down on the weekend or whenever he could and make that happen,” she said. “He tried to be there for everybody.”
Harris’ son, Cameron Harris, remembers him putting everything he had toward making his family’s life as full as it could be.
“Time, effort, money, blood, sweat, and tears, whatever was needed to make his family’s life better,” Cameron said in an email. “He loved to go all out on whatever we were doing: sports, vacation, anything. No matter the cost or commitment required. He had a zest for life and it showed everyday. He rarely said ‘no’ to anyone or any opportunity. Life did not pass him by. He wouldn’t allow it to.”
Jeff Harris’ daughter, Mallory Harris Tormoehlen, agreed.
“Everything that he did, he did it to 110%,” she said. He has ‘on’ and ‘off,’ that’s all he has.”
When she thinks of her father, the first thing that comes to mind is how supportive he was.
“Whatever you wanted to do, he found a way to make it possible for you to do it,” she said. “…I feel like ‘supportive’ doesn’t even encompass it really. He gave me and my brother every experience a kid could ever dream of. We went and did everything.”
They went to NASCAR races, IndyCar races, professional sports games, Disney World and trips to national landmarks.
“We went everywhere and did everything, and he wanted to make sure that we had every experience we could possibly have,” she said.
He made all their friends feel like they were his kids and drove her to countless softball games and practices throughout her youth, including to tournaments across the country.
“It would be nothing for him to work a 12-hour day and he would drive me to Indianapolis and he would sit and participate or watch three hours worth of lessons, and drive me home at ten o’clock at night on a school night,” she said.
She grew up working in his salon, from folding towels as a young girl to working as his receptionist in her teenage years. She followed in his footsteps and became a hair stylist herself, and credits her work ethic to his influence.
“You can’t control how much talent God gave you, you can’t control a lot of things, but you can always control your effort, and hard work gets you a lot further than a lot of other things do,” she said.
Jeff Harris was diagnosed with melanoma three years ago.
“It had already spread, and he knew that there was no cure,” ConnieJo said. “He made the conscious decision to pour as much living into whatever time he had left and pack in time with others, just in case the cancer surfaced sooner rather than later.”
When the cancer came back, he was determined to fight it, ConnieJo continued.
“He chose life, work and volunteerism rather than dwell on the possibility of leaving us too soon,” she said. “Unfortunately, it came back faster and stronger than he anticipated and four short months later, he was gone.”
ConnieJo urges others who feel that something may be wrong with their body to not wait but get checked out by a doctor as soon as possible.
