Boutique donates inventory to victims

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By Barb Ickes | Tuesday, August 12, 2008 10:02 PM CDT | () comments

Judy Heath, owner of Judy’s Barber Styling in Bettendorf, is moving her salon and is not taking the equipment with her. So she is donating it to washed-out salons in flood-damaged Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (John Schultz/QUAD-CITY TIMES) Buy this Photo

As a Quad-Citian, Judy Heath thought she knew all about floods.

Then she went to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

“It was like nothing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “That flood hit people who have never been hit before. This was the mother of all floods.”

When Heath returned to her home in Bettendorf, the images of Cedar Rapids continued to haunt her. She kept thinking about all those Iowans who lost everything, and she wanted to do something — anything.

Then it hit her.

Since March, Heath has been renovating the building she bought at 1979 Spruce Hills Drive, Bettendorf, to house her full-service salon. She had been renting the same small space at Cumberland Square for 15 years and decided it was time to buy her own place for Judy’s Barber Styling.

In fact, she was gutting the building in Bettendorf at the same time the Cedar River was gutting hundreds of buildings and homes in Cedar Rapids.

“About a month ago, I started thinking about what I was going to do with all of my equipment because I bought some newer stuff from a friend,” she said. “I thought about selling it on eBay, but then I thought: ‘What am I doing this for? Why not give it someone who needs it?’ And then my mind went to those flood victims.”

So she wrote up a little advertisement to put on the Internet to people in Cedar Rapids.

“It started, ‘Free to washed-out salons,’ ” she said.

As the right circumstances would have it, Heath’s daughter, who lives in Cedar Rapids, came upon a list of people who had lost items in the flood and needed help replacing them. On the list was Nancy Churchill, owner of West Side Hair Design.

For three weeks, Churchill had not been allowed near her salon on the west end of town. The Cedar River had taken it over.

“You can’t believe what you lose in a flood,” she said. “Everything was soaked, everything. We don’t even have any towels left. We’re just now getting our electricity back.”

Heath and Churchill seemed destined to meet.

“Her daughter put me in touch with her, and I couldn’t believe it,” Churchill said. “She is absolutely wonderful. She’s putting me back in business.”

On Saturday, Churchill and her husband will drive from Cedar Rapids to Bettendorf in a truck that is big enough to haul seven barber chairs, three shampoo chairs, five shampoo sinks, a desk, cash register, retail shelving — even an “Open” sign.

“These people don’t even have perm rods and hair dryers,” Heath said. “They need everything.”

Churchill estimates that 30 hair stylists in Cedar Rapids have lost all of their tools of the trade. Many of them cannot afford to return to their businesses and rebuild. There is simply too much to replace, and few businesses had insurance that covered flood damage.

“If I end up with extra (work) stations, I’ll pass them on to others,” Churchill said. “There are many of us who took just a terrible hit.”

Besides helping Churchill, Heath is giving an entire salon setup to another woman who got the message about free salon equipment for flood victims.

“She’s living in Iowa City, and she has six children,” Heath said. “Her husband recently left her and the children, and she’s opening a salon out of her home. I just feel like there’s more than one way to end up a victim.

“I remember that big snowstorm we had in the Quad-Cities in the late 1970s, and these people came around our neighborhood on snowmobiles, asking if anyone needed anything from the grocery store. People rose to the occasion to help. Until they prove me wrong, I believe in the decency of people.”

Helping Churchill, who had 3 feet of mud on her salon floor, is turning out to be exactly the kind of opportunity Heath was pining for after visiting Cedar Rapids.

“It does my heart a lot of good to be able to help,” she said. “It’s hard to see that kind of misery and not do something. I’m thrilled.”

Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.