Jose Romero, who barbered countless politicians, television announcers, bankers and entertainers, died Jan. 4 at his southeast Denver home. He was 95.
Romero, who operated Am’s Barber Shop for 50 years, mostly on 16th Street downtown, didn’t have the glamorous background some of his clients did.
He grew up in the San Luis Valley, where he began cutting his brothers’ hair and realized that “he was pretty good at it,” said his daughter, Barbara Crow, who lives in Portland, Ore.
He helped his fathers and siblings on an 80-acre farm where they raised barley that they sold to Coors Brewery. The “Depression left him a mentality of hard work that became cemented and stayed with him his entire life,” Crow said.
Jose Amarante Romero was born Nov. 2, 1915, in Capulin and went to high school in Star.
He married Margaret Gallegos on Nov. 7, 1936.
He served in the Navy in 1944 and 1945, part of the time in the Pacific. He cut hair while on board a ship and sent what he earned, plus his tips, back home.
After World War II, he picked up barbering full time.
Romero — who went by the nickname, “Am,” for Amarante — went to barber school and got a job in a shop where he earned $12 a week. The shop owner asked Romero whether he wanted to buy the place for $300, but Romero had only $100. He trudged around town looking for a bank, eventually finding one that would loan him $200.
He charged 25 cents for those first haircuts. Before he retired, he was making $20 per cut.
He went from a two-chair shop to one with eight chairs. At one time, it was cut by appointment only because of loyal customers and because he didn’t want anyone to have to stand in line. The lines led him to remark: “Imagine that, men waited in line to get their hair cut.”
Romero’s career came to an end in 1986, after he was hit by a truck as he waited for a bus on his way to work. “His leg was crushed,” and he could not stand for long periods of time, Crow said. But he continued barbering family members.
Crow said she remembers her father as a clarinetist, a dad who “frowned at an A-minus or B-plus” on his children’s report cards and someone “who made our boyfriends timid.”
In addition to his wife and daughter, he is survived by three other daughters: Dorothy Heselton and Susan Brunson, both of Centennial, and Margaret Jo Chojnowski of Richland, Mich.; 13 grandchildren; and 13 great-grandchildren. His son, Dr. Charles Romero, died three years ago.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
