A Dade City woman's long tresses will be sent to make wigs for cancer survivors.
By CHASE SQUIRES
Published June 18, 2003
DADE CITY - How Val Elder will spend her summer vacation: bald.
Elder, a San Antonio Elementary School teacher for more than 30 years, got her summer break off to a dramatic start Tuesday when she had her head shaved to show solidarity for her goddaughter, who underwent a brain operation on the same day.
Elder said the decision to hack off her locks wasn't something she took lightly - she's had hair below her shoulders since childhood - but it was worth it to let her goddaughter know she wasn't alone.
Packing off the trimmed tresses to Locks of Love, a charity that converts human hair into wigs for cancer survivors, made the gesture even more special, she said.
"If there's something I can do that helps, I think I should do it," she said, before her mother and sister began bunching her hair into ponytails for the cut.
Elder said she plans to visit her goddaughter, 17-year-old Allison Sedgewick, in a few weeks at her home in Maine. While Elder was getting her new hairdo, Sedgewick was in Massachusetts General Hospital for an operation her family hopes will end nine years of epileptic seizures.
Elder, 54, waited for word from Sedgewick's mother early Tuesday. When the medical team removed the teenager's hair and went into the operating room, Elder drove to her mother's house to take the plunge.
"I hope I don't start to cry," her mother, Lois Schell, said. "A woman's hair is very important."
Her sister, Suzanne Punch, had a suggestion: "I know, you can get your scalp tattooed."
Maybe not.
With most of her hair stuffed in a plastic bag and ready for shipping to Locks of Love, Elder went downtown for the finishing touch to the first barbershop she found in the phone book, A Touch of Class.
Barber Teddy Lamar shook his head, and surveyed.
"Does it matter where the first strike goes?" he asked.
It didn't, and the electric razor left a strip of bare skin.
It was over in minutes.
Lamar slapped some after shave on Elder's slick pate.
The cut was on the house.
"I remember when you had hair this short," her mother said. "When you were born."
