Seth King survived tuberculosis, racial discrimination and poverty.
More than surviving, he seemed to sail through it all — becoming a medical technician and owner of a barbershop.
King died Feb. 8 at his Pueblo home with hospice care. He was 75. He suffered from lung problems and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
King worked as an orderly and cut the hair of fellow college students for 50 cents to put himself through college, said his wife, Patricia King.
But he turned down the opportunity to cut Barack Obama’s hair when the future president came to Pueblo on a campaign swing.
“He didn’t think he should do that because he was a committed Republican,” said his stepdaughter, Kathy Cloninger.
But he was always generous and often cut hair for kids who couldn’t pay the full price. “Give me what you’ve got,” he’d tell them, said Londa Kingery-Springer of Pueblo.
Kingery-Springer, a family friend for decades, remembers King’s conversations about the civil-rights struggles and history in general. “He could talk and talk,” she said. “He was like the History Channel in person.”
Seth James King was born in Cameron, Texas, on May 25, 1935.
He was in a tuberculosis sanitorium for five years in his late-teen years.
He was prevented from going to the University of Texas because he was African-American, so he attended Huston-Tillotson University, a black religious school in Austin, his wife said. He realized he could make some money by cutting fellow students’ hair, so he went to barber school.
He worked as an orderly at Jefferson Davis Hospital in Houston while he attended Texas Southern University.
He finished his medical technician course but couldn’t find a place to intern there, so he moved to Pueblo in 1961 and did the intern work at Colorado Mental Health Institute of Pueblo. That evolved into a full-time job, and he stayed there for 33 years.
He married Ernestine De laney in 1961, and they had three sons. She died, and he married Patricia Ruybal in 2000.
He finished his bachelor’s degree in Pueblo. He worked weekends at the barbershop. Later he bought the shop, renamed it King’s Barber shop and was still cutting hair until near the end of his life. He bragged to the Pueblo Chieftain, “I started with this chair, and I haven’t moved yet.”
In addition to his wife and stepdaughter, he is survived by a daughter, Gretta Thompson of Pueblo; a son, Seth King Jr. of Boulder; two other stepdaughters, Corine Chavez of San Lorenzo, Calif., and Martina Hohulin of Elkhart, Ind.; 11 grandchildren; a brother, Robert King Jr. of Spring, Texas; and a sister, Dorothy Williams of Austin, Texas. Another son, Christopher King, died in 2007.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, Seth King’s date of birth was
incorrect. He was born May 25,
1935.
