By Elizabeth Cook
ecook@salisburypost.com
Salisbury barber Walt Shoaf and former Gov. Bob Scott shared a bond forged with scissors ó a lucky haircut.
Shoaf, 84, started cutting hair in the Yadkin Hotel barber shop in 1946.
One day, Kerr Scott came in as he was campaigning for governor around 1949. Already the state’s commissioner of agriculture, Scott was a character, Walt recalls.
“He chewed tobacco at the time,” Walt says. And he needed a haircut. So Walt obliged.
The election was the next day, and Kerr Scott won.
Four years later he was back in the barber chair at Walt’s place, this time running for the U.S. Senate.
“I said, ‘Do you know where you were the night before the last election?’ ” Walt recalls.
No, Kerr Scott said.
Walt reminded the governor he’d been right there in that shop, getting a haircut.
Well, then it must have been a lucky haircut, Kerr Scott said, so he’d have another.
Sure enough, the next day he won that election, too.
“Of course,” Walt says, “I didn’t have nothing to do with it.”
Like father like son. When Bob Scott started running for statewide office, he followed his father’s tracks to Walt Shoaf’s barber chair ó first when he ran for lieutenant governor, and again when he ran for governor. He served in that office from 1969 to 1973.
“He did write me a letter and said I did it,” Walt says. At that time, North Carolina limited its governors to one term, so Scott did not seek re-election.
But the Post photographed him back in Walt’s chair one more time in 1980, when Scott was in a primary race against Jim Hunt.
That’s one haircut Walt would rather not talk about, because his charms apparently had worn off. Hunt won.
Walt says Bob Scott’s haircuts were not particularly profitable. “I didn’t charge him.”
But they were collegial. Walt and the governor were more likely to discuss golf than politics.
Walt still plays “all the time,” he says. In his round at Corbin Hills on Friday, he broke even, he reports.
He has shortened his hours at the shop at 1327 W. Innes St., where he’s been ever since he ended a 14-year stint at the Yadkin Hotel.
Walt has cut many a person’s hair. Bob Scott was one of the special ones, and Walt was sad at hearing the news of his death Friday. “I thought a lot of him,” Walt says. “He was a fine fella.”