Over 50 years, barber cut thousands of heads of hair

Al Greso came from back east and had Old World sensibilities, but he became an Everett institution.

For almost 50 years, he was the barber in the basement of the Everett Elks Club.

“It got to a point where I no longer had customers, I had family,” Greso told Herald reporter David Chircop in 2007, before the club on Everett’s Rucker Avenue was torn down.

He started as the Elks barber in 1959, after the club building was remodeled. By 2007, he figured he’d done about 54,000 haircuts. It wasn’t just hair, but talk and close connections.

“He made me laugh every time,” said Ken Lechner, an Everett native now living in Port Townsend. “The first time I went there for a haircut, Al greeted me with, ‘Welcome to the dungeon.’ Maybe, but it was the friendliest dungeon,” Lechner said.

Albert John William Greso died April 10. He was 78.

Born Oct. 24, 1930 in Duquesne, Pa., near Pittsburgh, Greso was the son of Hungarian immigrants. “They came looking for work, they needed people to work in the steel mills. That’s what his father did,” said Diana Lee Greso, his wife of 54 years.

The couple raised six children: Deborah Dunham, of Houston, Texas; Steven Greso, of Snohomish; Christopher Greso, of Everett; Aaron Greso, of Culpeper, Va.; Patrick Greso, of Concrete; and Margaret Greso, of Seattle. He is also survived by seven grandchildren: Angela, Selina, Natalie, Maria, Ashton, Emily and Olivia; by three great-grandchildren; and by his sister, Pearl Pavelko, of McKeesport, Pa.

He made dozens of friends, not only at the Elks but through community ties, from church to the arts. A past exalted ruler at the Elks, Greso also had been a Grand Knight with the Knights of Columbus, a member of Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion and Everett Eagles, and had been in several Catholic parishes in Everett, Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Perpetual Help and St. Mary Magdalen

“He had a very fine bass baritone voice,” said Diana Greso, who remembered her husband first joining a church choir early in their marriage when the couple lived in Gary, Ind. He went on to sing in churches here and with the Seattle Scottish Singers and the Northwest Savoyards Musical Theatre Society.

After graduating from Duquesne High School, Greso joined the Navy. He served four years aboard the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier. Diana met her future husband in Seattle. “I had a roommate whose brother was on the ship, and they were invited to dinner,” she said.

Al Greso was about to be discharged from the Navy. He found work at a steel mill in Gary, Ind., near Chicago. They were married and settled in Gary, where he went to barber college. “He learned to be a barber in the Navy,” Diana Greso said.

Steven Greso, of Snohomish, said his father was gone so much, child-raising largely fell on their mother’s shoulders.

Steven Greso remembers his father getting home late from work on a Saturday, but still piling the kids into a truck to take them camping. They’d drive all the way to Pearrygin Lake, in the Methow Valley, and set up camp in the dark. “In the morning, we’d find out it was somebody else’s camp spot,” he said. “He tried to be Superman and do everything.”

While his father could be funny at work, Steve Greso remembers a quieter, more stern man at home. “He was a pretty traditional guy,” he said. His father’s Hungarian upbringing, he said, was reflected in his work and social life. “He grew up in a very social culture. A funeral or wedding party would go on for days.”

Steven Greso said his father cut the hair of laborers and lawyers, politicians and salespeople. Their station in life didn’t matter. “He never saw himself as unequal,” he said.

Aaron Greso, another son, recalls fishing trips with his father. As a teen, Aaron also worked at the Elks barber shop shining shoes. “He was the spark that held that place together,” Aaron Greso said. “He was always in that shop. Raising six kids, he had to be there.

His father went to Mass every Sunday, he said. “He would never leave before the singing was over. Al Greso loved to cook, and was known for his specialty — Cajun meatloaf. He built a brick oven in the back yard, Aaron said. “He also liked to cook fish,” he said.

Margaret Greso said she and her father had their disagreements. “I think I inherited his personality, and in some respects I knew him better because of it,” she said.

“He was definitely very traditional. It was Old World and East Coast,” Margaret Greso said. And it didn’t matter where he went, he had friends. “He always ran into people he knew, everywhere. It could be on the other side of the country, he’d run into people he knew.”

His widow agrees. “Every time we’d go back east, he’d meet people he knew, from the Navy, from the Elks, from the Knights of Columbus, the Northwest Savoyards, whatever,” Diana Greso said.

“He was the kind of guy, even if you didn’t agree with him from time to time, you still loved him,” Aaron Greso said.

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.