I have grown a beard.
That is not really a “news flash.” People who see me regularly, apart from the frozen image connected to this column, know I grow a beard almost every winter.
I don’t know exactly why I grow it. Years ago, I grew it to irritate my mother-in-law, but she died long ago. (I don’t think the beard caused her death, but it could have been a contributing factor, I suppose.)
When I arrived on the doorstep of my future wife in 1967, I was a ’60s nightmare for her mother — the traditional wife of a United Methodist minister. In those days, a beard was a symbol of hippies and left-wing political radicals. My future wife invited me into the home, while her mother tried frantically to lock the door.
After Ann and I married, her mother accepted the annual beard a bit more, but still introduced me to friends with the disclaimer, “He doesn’t usually look like this.”
By the mid-1970s, beards and long hair had moved from the political left to the mainstream, as country-music stars and Hollywood actors took over the style. Still, within corporate America, unshaved facial hair of any kind for men in “white collar” positions was an absolute no-no.
Right out of college I spent two years as a high school English teacher in the Indianapolis Public Schools and was ordered the first day of work to shave off my mustache. (I refused and punctuated the refusal by becoming only one of three members of the American Federation of Teachers at Manual High School. The union raised the issue and the principal gave me a pass.)
When I arrived for an editing job with the former parent-company of The Republic in 1980, the dress code was no beards, white or light blue dress shirts and appropriate neckties (preferably plain colors). Mustaches were frowned upon, but did not bring about an immediate call from the boss. Progress was being made.
Evidently, beards have always made a statement of one kind or another. No American president from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln had a beard. After Lincoln grew one in 1860 and then was martyred by assassination, each president elected for the next 40 years moved into the White House sporting a beard.
Clean-shaven William McKinley broke the string at the turn of the 20th century. He was followed by Theodore Roosevelt and Willian Howard Taft, who had mustaches. All presidents since that time — 18 in all — have been clean shaven. (If I decide to run for president in 2020, I plan to shave mine off to increase my odds for victory from minus-10 to zero.)
My chief lesson from all my years of beards is that every new growth brings about a new set of assumptions about what my beard says about my character, emotional state and Freudian motivations. And, through the years, few people have been hesitant about giving me their on-the-spot analysis.
Older women (a classification now harder to find at my age) often have looked at me with disgust, shaking their heads and saying they would never kiss a man with a beard. (I generally have felt relieved by that disclosure.) Other people have said I look older or younger, or uglier or more sinister, or funnier or whatever.
To be honest, however, most people don’t even notice the change these days. Maybe we are all more accepting of change than we used to be. Or maybe our nation is just in so much daily turmoil that no one has time to worry about the impact of someone else’s facial hair on the environment.
On the other hand, maybe we are simply becoming kinder and less judgmental than we once were. Maybe mom’s old adage — “If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all” — has finally taken root.
Come to think of it, only one person has commented about my beard since I began letting it sprout a few weeks ago. Early in the process, my friend Jeff Baker stepped out of his shop in downtown Columbus as I was walking by, looked at me for a moment and congratulated me for my new look.
“Anything you can do to cover up that face is a step forward,” he encouraged. While the statement was not an unqualified affirmation, it was better than my mother-in-law locking me out on the porch.
Bud Herron is a retired editor and newspaper publisher who lives in Columbus. He served as publisher of The Republic from 1998 to 2007. His weekly column appears on the Opinion page each Sunday. Contact him at [email protected]
