paula.stuhr@gaflnews.com



TIFTON — Snip, snip, snip – a year’s worth of hair is gone in a matter of seconds.

Beth O’Kelley knew that her waist-length hair could keep her neck and back warm during this January cold front, but she thought that her long locks could be better used by someone else.

O’Kelley recently had 25 inches of her chestnut-colored hair cut off – from a length that grazed her backside to barely grazing her earlobes – to donate to the Locks of Love program. Locks of Love gives wigs of human hair to disadvantaged children with long-term medical hair loss.

O’Kelley learned about the program last January after an article ran in The Gazette about the topic. She stopped cutting her hair and let it grow as long as she could stand it before “it started to get into everything.”

She didn’t tell anyone, not even her husband or her best friend, that she was getting her hair cut on Friday. Her husband pretended he didn’t notice the change in her appearance, and her best friend was “just tickled” that she had gone ahead with the donation.

Although O’Kelley first learned about the program a year ago, wigs have long been on her mind. In 1985, O’Kelley’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. When she relapsed in 1993 and lost all of her hair following treatments, O’Kelley tried to get a wig for her mother, but no one at the treatment facility knew how to get her a wig.

“They told us to buy a scarf,” O’Kelley said. Her mom felt bad about herself with nothing to cover her head and O’Kelley wanted to save someone else from this feeling.

“If there is any way possible that someone can donate their hair, I recommend doing it,” O’Kelley said. “I know how my mom felt not being able to fix her hair or not even having any hair to fix.” She said that the only regret she has with donating her hair is her cold neck.

Both of O’Kelley’s parents succombed to cancer in 1995 – her mother of cancer of the kidney and her father of pancreatic cancer.

O’Kelley went to Pamela Keith, the owner of Beauty Villa, to donate her hair. “When someone does this, I don’t charge for my services,” Keith said. “That way she’s giving and so am I.”

Keith agrees with O’Kelley in the belief that people need to look good in order to feel good, regardless of having cancer. Although many people donate hair to Locks of Love in memory or in honor of a loved one with cancer, cancer is not the most common reason children need hairpieces. Approximately 90 percent of children approved to receive a hairpiece from Locks of Love suffer from alopecia areata, a disease causing permanent baldness in children. Other common causes of permanent hair loss in children are ectodermal dysplasia, burns to the scalp and radiation treatment to the brain stem to treat brain tumors.

It takes about 10-15 ponytails of at least 10 inches in length to make one hairpiece, so many donors are needed to make these wigs for children.

Keith has cut five heads of hair for the Locks of Love program, but says that O’Kelley’s donation of 25 inches is by far the most that she has cut.

“You really have to search to find people with these kind of genuine hearts,” Keith said of O’Kelley’s gift.