Denton barbershop offers free haircuts, meal on Thanksgiving

DENTON – A barbershop may be one of the last places you'd plan on spending Thanksgiving. Dozens of families, however, see things differently. Stepping foot inside Alton Phillips III's barbershop brings them the kind of holiday cheer they've been missing.

"I wanted to make her look good," said Phillips while trimming an expectant mother's shoulder length locks.

"What they're doing here is just..." paused Chasity Pardue. "It's just beautiful."

She got her first haircut in five years. AP's Barbershop told her to keep her wallet shut.

Barbershop offers Thanksgiving meal with trimmings. Jenny Doren reports.

"It's a hard life, so anything that cheers you up it's nice," said Pardue with a smile.

She and her growing family live on the streets. Pardue and 50 others with similar struggles were made to feel beautiful in what sometimes can be an ugly world.

"I have to worry about paying rent and electric and paying the phone," admitted Eileen Smith.

A trip to the barbershop is not a priority, so Smith's 9-year-old son has waited. He remembers the last time.

"A year ago," recalls Jacob Smith. "Last year on Thanksgiving."

"He loves getting his hair cut," added his mom. "It's just I can't get it done as much as he would like to have it done."

A haircut was a Thanksgiving treat for him and so many more. Phillips welcomed them into his business and treated them like family.

"I took it upon myself to say 'Let's get a team together,'" he said. "Let's get a few people together and let's come and make something happen."

Cross Church rounded up bags of donated clothes, and warm food was served free of charge.

"Sometimes we get so caught up in our own world that we forget that there are people that don't have family, don't have friends, don't have anything. And so what we really want to do is reach those people and let them know that they matter," said Pastor Vincent Silmon.

The barbershop feels the giving spirit not just during the holiday season, but year round. It even hosted a back-to-school bash in the fall and filled up hundreds of backpacks with school supplies. There were free haircuts too.

Phillips' many acts of kindness keep giving the community more reasons to be thankful this season.