Barber retires after 70 years in business

By Christie Campbell

AVELLA, Pa. – Dominick DeFilippis was only 14 years old when he began cutting men's hair.

Now 84, DeFilippis plans to retire from the business he has been in for 70 years. Within the next month or two, he plans to close his shop in the small community of Avella.

Many of the men who had been DeFilippis' customers have passed away, and the younger generation is no longer interested in going to a barber shop, he said.

His shop on Campbell Street is a reminder of days when life was simpler and men stopped at a barber shop for a close shave and a haircut, taking the time to joke and gossip with friends and neighbors.

The shop has a vintage flavor with its three barber chairs dating to 1915, marble-topped antiseptic cabinets and razor strops. Unfortunately, the old red, white and blue striped barber pole outside his shop was stolen about 10 years ago. It was too costly to replace, he said. Today he turns on a revolving red light to signal when the shop is open.

An avid hunter, DeFilippis has photographs of his hunting trophies such as deer and turkey hanging in the shop, as well as photographs of his family. He won't miss working that much, he said, because it will give him more time to hunt.

DeFilippis initially learned the business from his father.

"I watched him, and I learned how to cut hair before I went to barber school," he explained.

He attended the Ideal Barber School in Pittsburgh during the summers, staying with his uncle. The school also operated a shop where customers paid 25 cents for a haircut from the students.

"When they saw what I could do, they put me up front," he said.

In the DeFilippis shop, haircuts were once 50 cents. Today he charges $10, $12.50 for long hair.

"I can give a nice haircut in 15 minutes," he said.

DeFilippis isn't too fond of today's hairstyling salons, and confesses he chuckles when he sees the way some women cut men's hair.

"They don't know how to do it," he said.

In addition to his dad, DeFilippis' brothers Pat and Frank cut hair. Back then the coal mines were operating, and DeFilippis remembers two theaters, a lumber yard, a bakery and a half-dozen grocery stores being in town. There were many men in Avella needing their services.

"We were busy all the time," DeFilippis said.

Although his customer base has dwindled, he still has a few who come from Follansbee or Wellsburg, W.Va., and one woman calls for an appointment whenever her son from Cleveland is planning to visit.

He and his wife, Mary, had four children, but only the youngest, Frank, followed in the family's business. He operates a hairstyling shop in Waterdam Plaza in McMurray.

(This article first appeared in the Observer-Reporter newspaper.)

Staking new ground at America's most-famous archeological site

AVELLA, Pa. – Albert Miller knew he was onto something when he began digging around a groundhog hole at the foot of an ancient rock ledge on his property decades ago and pulled out a few burned bones.

In no time, he unearthed an intact Indian flint knife without realizing his find in Independence Township, Pa. would someday lead to one of the most important archaeological finds in the United States.

Afraid of looters, he covered the pit and kept these discoveries to himself until he could find the right person to lead a professional dig at the site, said David Scofield, director of what since has become internationally known as the Meadowcroft rock shelter.

The dig would eventually last for three decades and produce evidence that travelers had been camping down under the shelter for at least 16,000 years, making it the oldest known evidence of human occupation in North America.

“This site just kept going down," Scofied said. “It just blew everyone away. No one had a clue it was this old.”

Among the other early items to be unearthed in 1973 by James Adovasio, a professor at the time at the University of Pittsburgh, were “a chronology of beer cans and drug paraphernalia” left behind by modern parties, Scofield said.

Since then, teams led by Adovasio have discovered more than 20,000 items that range from stone and bone tools to flint and pottery fragments. They also have found 956,000 animal remains that include those of the now-extinct passenger pigeon, as well as elk, turtle and rabbit. Add to that 4 million plant remains, with the most common of them being hackberry seeds.

The most significant artifact is a speartip that has been classified as the oldest such find in American and named the Miller lanceolate to honor Albert Miller.

Other archeologists with opposing theories about the arrival of mankind to North America have attempted to discredit the discoveries by Adovasio, who now teaches at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa. One argued that the coal-rich ground in southwestern Pennsylvania skewed radio carbon tests that were used to determine the dates of his discoveries, Scofield said.

“It’s been a lightening rod for controversy. There were a lot of questions as there should be in science,” he said, adding that most people in the field have since come around to agreeing with Adovasio about Meadowcroft.

Scofield and his staff are working on a game plan to make the best use of this property that also is home to a village of relocated and restored buildings from the 1800s. They want to craft a tour that would first take visitors to the rock shelter to introduce them to the arrival of humans to the continent. From there, they would visit a new Indian village under construct before heading to a yet-to-be-developed sheep farm similar to those that dominated Washington County in the early 1800s. The tour would continue to the restored buildings before ending back at the shelter to discuss modern science and how it is used to evaluate the dig.

“The land is the common theme,” Scofield said. “We’re really building a vibrant tourism industry,” he said

More than $260 million was spent in this county on tourism in 2006, the last year the numbers were crunched. This type of spending is expected to skyrocket because of new gambling opportunities at The Meadows Racetrack & Casino, as well as shopping at Tanger Outlets about 20 miles to the east in Washington, Pa., Scofield said.


(Captions: David Scofield, director of Meadowcroft rock shelter, top, discusses the depths archeologists have gone to unearth evidence of humans in North America. A replica of one of the huts covered in cattail mats that were used for shelter by Monongahela Indians in southwestern Pennsylvania is part of a new attraction at the tourism destination.)