Bucksport’s Frank Dunbar Beloved town barber for 54 years

by Brian Swartz

When Frank Manly Dunbar opened his barber shop on Main Street in Bucksport in 1962, he could not imagine that 60 years later his hometown would honor him and his business.

Born in Bucksport to Don and Kay Dunbar on January 5, 1939, Frank met Jacqueline Willett in grade school. They dated while attending Bucksport High, but their relationship “was not serious” until their senior year, Jackie recalled.

They graduated in June 1958. That November Frank enlisted in the Army for three years and trained as a Nike missile technician. He came home at Christmas and proposed to Jackie.

Then, arriving home on leave in August 1959, Frank “told me and everybody we were going to get married,” Jackie said. The wedding took place on September 1; “it was a Tuesday, and it was raining,” she remembered.

Frank returned to his California post. Jackie flew west to join him in October and started working for Bank of America. “We got to see the 71st [Annual] Tournament of Roses Parade,” an event she warmly remembers, but the Army soon sent Frank to a Nike missile battery in Georgia. Then he shipped to Thule Air Base in Greenland “a week or two before our first anniversary,” Jackie recalled, and Thule is where Frank’s lifelong barber career began.

After moving in with her parents in Bucksport, Jackie sent Frank a Sears & Roebuck barber kit with which he cut airmen’s hair to earn extra money. Frank enjoyed barbering; he returned home for good in August 1961 and attended the nine-month Hanson’s Barber School in Lewiston. The Dunbars’ first daughter, Diana (Dee Dee) was born while he learned barbering; her sister, Molly, was born 18 months later.

Renting space from businessman Ivan Braun, Frank opened his first barber shop on Main Street in Bucksport on June 22, 1962. According to Jackie, “there were seven other barber shops then in a small town, and he said, ‘What was I thinking?’” for the haircuts, but to chat with Frank. “He was a home boy” who made many friends, Jackie said.

Frank operated his barber shop from seven different Main Street locations over his 54-year career. “He was known as the barber who moved the most in the State of Maine,” Jackie noted.

“He loved his town and his state,” she said. When Bucksport shifted from selectmen to town councilors, Frank won election to the first town council in 1970 and served until 1977. Belonging to the local Jaycees, he helped launch the waterfront clean-up that ultimately resulted in the popular Bucksport Waterfront Walkway. Frank served on Bucksport’s board of assessment and economic development committee.

“He loved his veterans.” Jackie said. Besides volunteering as the American Legion Post. No. 93 chaplain, Frank was a charter member of the Veterans’ (cont. on page 22)

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Memorial Committee that spearheaded placing the Bucksport veterans’ memorial near where Ivan Braun’s store (and Frank’s first barbershop) once stood.

A Bucksport Historical Society member, Frank had a keen interest in history, especially pertaining to World War II. “He liked keeping things alive that are important,” Jackie said.

Trained as an expert marksman while in the Army, Frank became a Maine firearms-safety instructor. He and Jackie enjoyed fishing, and “we hunted together all the time,” she said. “We hunted deer on our own land. We didn’t get a lot of deer, but we had a lot of fun.”

The Dunbars also hunted moose. Permit in hand, Frank borrowed a .300 Savage and a snowmobile trailer in autumn 1983, and “we tented 10 miles back in the woods” near Smyrna, Jackie said. “We had done our own scouting. I can do a pretty good moose call,” which lured in the first bull moose the Dunbars ever shot. Frank was a long- time vice president of the Bucks Mills Rod and Gun Club and belonged to the Maine Antler & Skull Trophy Club for 20 years. Later in life he was appointed to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife Advisory Commission.

Trained as an auctioneer in 1968, Frank traveled part time around Maine to run auctions for the next 12 years. Licensed as a notary public in 1989, he became “The Marrying Barber,” officiating at many weddings (including a grandson’s and a granddaughter’s).

Committed Christians, the Dunbars helped start the Nazarene church in Belfast and later the River of Hope Church of the Nazarene now meeting in the same Main Street building as Frank’s Barber Shop. His faith was vitally important to Frank.

His daughters Dee Dee and Molly both became licensed barbers. In the past Molly filled in for her father when available, and Dee Dee has worked more than 28 years at Frank’s Barber Shop. She has continued operating it since her father retired in 2016, but even after retirement “he’d be in here,” Jackie said. “”He loved it. He would come into the shop and visit with his friends.

“He loved people. He was a great judge of character,” she said. “Integrity: His father had integrity, and he did, too.”

Frank fell seriously ill in December 2021 and died on Christmas Day. His family scheduled Frank’s celebration of life for June 25, 2022 and the Bucksport Town Council declared that Saturday as Frank Dunbar Day “in honor of his contributions to his country, his state and his community, and to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the small business he started in Bucksport,” stated Bucksport Town Council Chairman Peter Stewart.