Jakki Singleton loved hairstyling, shopping, debating politics and her friends.
Singleton, who died Jan. 8 at age 70, made lifelong friends with her customers at the various places where she cut and styled hair. And they followed her when she changed locations.
“She was my hairdresser for 14 years. I followed her moves three times,” said Ruth Shepard of Centennial.
“She was a warm and inviting person and had good suggestions when I wanted to change my hairstyle,” Shepard said.
Singleton and a friend, Corlis Graham of Centennial, loved to shop and often traded clothes later because they were both about 100 pounds and just over 5 feet tall.
“We’d get home, and one of us would say, ‘You take this; it looks more like you,”‘ said Graham. “We could talk and laugh on the phone for hours.”
Singleton “never gained weight,” said her daughter Janet Singleton of Denver. “She loved ‘skinny’ way before skinny was in.”
She said her mother had an “eclectic style” and loved nothing better than to critique the clothing and hairdos at the annual Academy Awards.
“You think Joan Rivers is hard on people,” Janet Singleton said.
Sometimes Jakki Singleton would give someone something she’d bought for herself, said Shepard.
“She tried to give me shoes, but they were spike heels. I couldn’t wear them. She could,” she said.
Singleton had a lot of hidden talents, said her daughter. Her mother liked to draw, wrote limericks and kept up on politics.
She also had advice: “Question everything.”
Jakki Singleton was more than proud of her daughter, who won the 2003 Colorado Book Award for her novel “This Side of the Sky.” For years, she carried a copy of the book in her purse.
Jacqueline Vasser was born July 10, 1936, in Chicago and finished high school there.
Her grandmother didn’t like the little girl’s first name, so she called her Joanne, and that name stuck with family members. But to friends, she was Jackie, until she decided to change the spelling to Jakki several years ago.
She married John Singleton, and they had one daughter. They later divorced.
Jakki Singleton worked in offices until she went into professional hairstyling, which she had done privately for years.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
