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Death Of Beloved Bronx Barber To Coronavirus Underscores Wider Loss Of Community Foundation
By
Mirela Iverac
Published Apr 17, 2020
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Courtesy Hammett family.
By
Mirela Iverac
Published Apr 17, 2020
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In the late 1980s, when LeShawn Hammett was a kid in a public housing development in the South Bronx, he saw a lot of his neighbors come through his home to get a haircut. His dad, Leroy Hammett, had a full-time job as a welder, and the family lived comfortably. But he set up a barber’s chair in their 4th floor apartment to take on a second job.
Soon afterwards, he moved the barbershop from their home to a storefront next to the Patterson Houses and called it Leroy’s Unisex. It was a black-owned business when there weren’t many around.
“It wasn’t your average barbershop,” said Hammett, now 39. “It was the community's barbershop. My father did block parties. My father did free haircut days for seniors, free haircut days for kids.”
Since the coronavirus outbreak began, the city has likely lost more than 12,000 of its residents to the disease—a loss unlike any other in recent history. Some victims were widely well-known. Others, like Leroy, were less well-known but stood out in their communities.
“He would try to make sure that if you were going on a job interview and you didn't have the money to get a haircut—he would still make sure that you got your haircut,” said Chris Lewis, 33.
Lewis is Leroy’s grandson but was raised by Leroy because his mother wasn’t able to take care of him. Lewis said everyone at the Patterson Houses seemed to know Leroy.
“If guys had come out of prison and they got barbering as a skill, he would hire you,” Lewis said.
When Leroy closed the barber shop ten years ago, he started another career. His son LeShawn, who was coaching college basketball, took Leroy on as a volunteer assistant coach at Cecil College in Maryland and Penn State Wilkes-Barre.
One member of the Penn State team, Jheron Dawson-Johnson, recalls that he and his teammates loved Leroy, and called him “Pops.”
“Most of us didn’t have cars up there,” Dawson-Johnson, now 23, said. “So if I had to go, like, grocery shopping, anytime of the day… Pops was there. If you got sick, had to go to the doctor's, Pops took you.”
Leroy planned to coach with his son until they won a national championship in their division. A year ago, they reached that goal. Their Penn State Wilkes-Barre team won Division II of the U.S. Collegiate Athletic Association.
“I remember turning to the bench, my father just had tears in his eyes,” he said. “I'd never seen my dad cry, but it was tears of joy.”
Just a year later, last month, Leroy, who suffered from diabetes, went to Lincoln Medical Center, a public hospital in the Bronx, because of high sugar levels. A few days later his oxygen levels were so low that he ended up in Lincoln again. Pneumonia and intubation followed. He tested positive for COVID-19 and then his kidneys began to fail.
“They told me that my dad had not been on dialysis yet because they only had two machines available in that department of the ICU and that two other people were using them,” Hammett said, recalling what his father’s doctors told him. “At that point, I pretty much was livid and I was very upset.”
On the evening of March 30th, Hammett got a call from the hospital.
**“**I received the call that my dad passed away,” he said. “The world kind of ended for us.”
Karla Griffith, a spokeswoman for NYC Health and Hospitals, declined to comment on this case, but said Lincoln Hospital has a sufficient number of dialysis machines. COVID-19 damages not only lungs but also other organs like kidneys, and some doctors have said that’s caused a shortage of dialysis machines.
At 71, with an underlying condition—diabetes—the odds were stacked against Leroy. In the city, the virus has been killing black people at twice the rate it kills white people. Andre Caravello, who’s in his 40s now, started getting haircuts from Leroy when he was 8 and got advice from him throughout his life.
He said Leroy’s passing leaves a void in the Patterson community.
“With all of these elder folks passing away… we're losing a lot of the foundation that we stand on in that community*,*” he said. “They're the ones that tell us this is wrong. They're not like the police that tells you this is wrong and then arrest you. They tell you this is wrong, but they tell you chill, calm down a little bit.”
Tagged
barber
COVID-19
coronavirus
the bronx
Mirela Iverac
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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