Joe Quattrone, witness to 50 years of Congressional history from his barber’s booth in the Rayburn Building, will be retiring at the end of August.
Mr. Quattrone started on Mar. 2nd, 1971, coinciding with a Weather Underground bomb going off in a Senate bathroom. Over the years, he has remained, even after all but one of the barber shops in the House were privatized in the 1990s.
“What can I say? I’m going to miss it. But it’s time for me to go after 51-and-a-half years,” Mr. Quattrone told Roll Call.
Born in the “toe” of the Italian peninsula, Mr. Quattrone came to America as a teenager in the 1950s. Before he worked as a barber, he helped pour the terrazzo floors of the Rayburn Building where he works now, according to Roll Call.
“A little guy, coming from a family of farmers, from nothing — I’ve got a job with the most powerful people in the world. What a pleasure and an honor to serve here,” Mr. Quattrone said to Roll Call.
Mr. Quattrone, who trimmed hair on both sides of his chair and the aisle, acted as an institutional memory bank even as the House changed over the years.
“Joe is part of the institutional history of the House that remembers when members lived here more than they do now,” Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, told Politico in 2008.
Mr. Quattrone got his start doing barber work for the Pentagon, and kept to the military initially after leaving.
“I was one of 44 barbers at Andrews Air Base. I’d been doing the short military haircuts, but I started doing regular cuts and styling. When a job opened in the House of Representative’s shop in 1970, I went to see Wayne Hayes, the Congressman from my district in Ohio. Two days later, they called and told me I had the job,” Mr. Quattrone explained in a 2009 interview with HistoryNet.
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