Jean Dellow Brown (Jeanne). Hairdresser; born Shannon October 9, 1911; died Palmerston North July 26, 2008.
If hairdressers are poor men's psychiatrists, Jeanne Brown did a lot of good for many people in her life.
She was a hairdresser all her working life, and listened to, clients' stories and worries and joys all day long.
Her niece, Sue Curran, said Aunty Jeanne had an abiding interest in people.
"She was always interested in you, and what you were doing. It didn't mater who you were, whether you were related or not, she cared and she wanted to know."
Miss Brown was born in Shannon. Her father was a railway ganger, helping build then upkeep the railway line that in 1908 linked Wellington and Auckland, passing through Shannon.
She was one of six sisters, with an after-thought brother 15 years younger than herself. The family lived in a two-roomed railway cottage.
Miss Brown went to Auckland to study ladies' hairdressing, gaining her diploma in 1934. She worked in Thames, then applied to work on a cruise liner. That dream failed because the company wouldn't accept applicants from New Zealand. Undaunted, she tried to enter via Australia - but then World War II broke out and put paid to pleasure cruising.
She went to Wellington, and spent five years teaching hairdressing, earning E3 2s a week. Then she returned to Palmerston North, buying a house with her father, and taking up the position she would hold for the rest of her working life - hairdresser in one of the city's most gracious men's hairdressing shops of the day, Giorgi's. That shop was a landmark on Coleman Mall until it closed in 1976.
Men's hairdressing was a different can of spray to women's - and the clients weren't used to women hairdressers. Mr Giorgi spent seven months teaching Miss Brown the fine art of cutting men's hair - the good old 1940s short back and sides - and learning to shave men with a cut-throat razor.
When Miss Brown turned 90, she told The Tribune that she'd been scared stiff of that cut-throat razor at first. "My dad had told me never to touch his [razor]."
The lady hairdresser was a great asset for Mr Giorgi. The customers were interested in her, and kept coming back.
Mrs Curran said her aunt never married, in spite of having plenty of suitors. She suspected that she may have lost somebody special in World War II, as so many women did.
She remembered her aunt as being beautifully groomed, with lovely hands and nails, as a person who disliked purple but wore a lot of teal, who was not a big reader, but loved sport, especially golf and tennis.
"She'd have been glued to the Olympics."
Miss Brown stayed active and healthy all her life, driving until fairly recently. She walked, and ran a highly productive vegetable garden - beans and tomatoes in summer, and special lacy-leafed lettuce in winter.
After she retired, she was a founding member of the women’s club Probus and the World Overseas League.
"She was just always busy and interested. She didn't sit round with her feet up."
Sources: The Tribune newspaper and Miss Brown's niece Sue Curran.
