OP-ED: Fondly recalling local barber Harry Fee
On Dec. 28, 2022, Uniontown High School athletes and fans lost a longtime friend and one of their fiercest supporters.
Local barber Harry Fee, a lifetime member of the Red Raiders booster organization, has forever earned a place in local sports history. An all-county lineman in 1955, he helped lead his UHS team to an 8-2 season. Athletic excellence ran in his family’s DNA, with his brother, Albert, playing alongside Harry, and son, Eric, a starter on the 1981 Uniontown state championship basketball team. In fact, Harry and Eric were inducted as a father-and-son duo into the UHS Sports Hall of Fame.
Harry Fee was a man who never met a stranger. Many knew the tall, affable Harry as a man who never missed a UHS basketball game. On Friday nights, he would hold court on his special stool set up just left of the first row, closest to the door. Everyone who walked in would be met with his friendly, “Hey, how ya doin’? Come over here. I want you to meet somebody.” One of his favorite things would be to introduce Person A, whom he liked, to Person B, whom he liked. Soon, Person A and Person B would become friends and members of the ever-growing Harry Fee Fan Club. Others knew Harry from the YMCA, where he loved to greet people just inside the door with a smile and a joke, and often a story about sports.
Still others will have fond memories of all the lively Pirates, Steelers and Penguins discussions in his barber shop on Mt. Vernon Avenue, a place reminiscent of a Hollywood movie set, where the characters met up at the barber shop to hash over the news of the day. I once heard Harry and his patrons solve all the management problems of the Pittsburgh Pirates in one conversation, that included hiring a new coach, new players and new owner. Men would meet there an hour before their appointments, just to get in on those sports talks. College pennants of his former clients hung all over the walls, representing which colleges they had or currently played for, including a Harvard pennant representing his son, Eric, who played football there in the early 1980s. It was fun reading the pennants to discover which local lad went where.
A devout man, Harry attended daily Mass at St. John’s and St. Therese churches, and was a welcoming presence for many years, standing in the back of St. Therese Church for Saturday night Mass, where friends gathered around him at the end of services for friendly chit-chat that lasted until he closed the church down and the priest began dimming the lights. Those last two pews were filled with a group of friends from The Greatest Generation, who sat in their same spots each week and enjoyed each others’ company. Sadly, most of that group has passed away, but I like to picture them all together in heaven, still kibitzing with Harry after mass.
My final picture of my neighbor, Harry, and his lovely wife, Dolores, is one of sitting with them on their front porch in the summer, just listening to the many great stories Harry would tell. I’ll bet everyone who’s reading this has a story or two of their own about Harry. Other friends would pop in and out to say hello to the Fees, and I always met a new friend there, or reconnected with some high school friend I hadn’t seen in years. You see, Harry brought people together like that. There was nothing he liked better, except for maybe a good Uniontown-Laurel Highlands basketball game, which he never missed. Harry’s wife Dolores was the soul of kindness and a good conversationalist herself. The two became like second parents to me after my own parents passed away, and I’m sure there were many others who felt the same way about them. They opened their doors and their hearts to the whole community. That’s something the world could use a lot more of.
I’ll miss their kindness. I’ll miss the camaraderie. I’ll miss all the great stories. But I’ll never miss the memories, because Harry and Dolores Fee will live on in our hearts and in our memories, and in all our stories for a very long time to come.
Paula O’Connell is a Uniontown area resident.