COMBING THE VALLEY BARBER LEAVING HIS ADOPTED HOME TO GO BACK TO GREAT BRITAIN.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

BURBANK - He's packed up his clippers and scissors, put away his bottles of hair tonic and swept the last wisps of someone else's hair off the floor.

Johnny Hichens is going home.

The transplanted Brit, who opened Johnny's Barbershop in 1952 on the Burbank Mall - even before there was a Burbank Mall - is going home to England, where he'll live in a senior complex not far from his daughter.

This 50-year love affair he's been carrying on with Burbank - the last 16 years at Shocky's Barbershop on Magnolia Boulevard - is finally coming to an end.

``It's been hard breaking the news to my longtime customers,'' Johnny said as he packed up his barbering supplies and ``good luck'' cards.

``They've been taking it hard,'' said the 87-year-old barber, smiling. ``I think they all thought they'd be gone before I was.''

Wes Sperier isn't smiling, though. He's been sitting in Johnny's barber chair once a month for the last 40 years. And, like most of Johnny's old customers, he considers the barber a friend to be missed.

``I'm not losing a barber - I'm losing a friend,'' Wes said Wednesday, sounding pretty depressed.

``If you were down, Johnny would pick you up. If you were too high, he'd calm you down. And if you got politically explosive in his chair, he'd diffuse you.

``There are a lot of people in this town who are going to really miss this guy,'' Wes said. ``He's special.''

Exactly how special took him 35 of those 40 years sitting in Johnny's barber chair to find out, Wes said.

The kid was 14 in 1929, when the Great Depression knocked the world back on its heels and knocked little Johnny Hichens out of school and into his first job so he could help his parents put food on the table for nine kids.

``I started an apprenticeship in a barber shop in Camborne in the county of Cornwall, way down at the tip of England,'' he said. ``I was making a half-dollar a week, then a dollar a week after a year.

``By the time my apprenticeship ended four years later, I was making $10 a week,'' he said, laughing. ``But back then, that money went a long way.''

What the Great Depression didn't steal from his youth, World War II did.

By 1938, Johnny was in the British Navy. On D-Day, he was a 29-year-old gunner serving on a ship convoying Americans from their base in Dartmouth, England, to Omaha Beach.

The years of poverty and the years of war lived deep inside the kid for a long time - left to customers, like Wes Sperier, to pry out decades later.

``I knew John for 35 years before he told me those stories,'' Wes said.

The kid barber left the British Navy in 1946 and found himself four years later in Burbank with a wife, Patricia, and two children - following his wife's sister, who had moved to Burbank after marrying an American GI.

``I opened Johnny's Barbershop at Palm and Orange Grove, on the mall before the mall was there,'' Johnny said. ``I stayed there for 40 great years and made a lot of friends.''

Al Iverson was one of the first barbers Johnny had working with him. ``Not only was he a great barber to learn from, but he always had great stories,'' Iverson said. ``And that's very important for a barber.''

Sharon Yago, owner of Shocky's Barbershop, convinced Johnny to end his short retirement 16 years ago and come work with her.

``I met Johnny when he had his own shop and remembered how popular he was with all the customers,'' she said. ``I hate to see him go now, but he's finally got the chance to go home and be near his daughter, so we all understand.''

Still, Burbank's not going to be the same, says John Holt, who knows Johnny from his work with the Burbank Elks Club and local Boy Scout Troop 210.

``When you look back on all the good work John has done for scouting in Burbank, well, you realize what a remarkable man he is, and how much we're all going to miss him,'' Holt said.

But, it's time, Johnny says. Burbank's been good to him - no, make that great to him.

But his heart is back in the little town of Henley, on the Thames River, where his daughter lives.

The town's got one main street and no barber shop, Johnny Hichens says, with a big smile and twinkle in his eye.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Barber John Hichens gives a trim to longtime customer David Bingham, 90, at Shocky's Barber Shop in Burbank on Tuesday. Hichens intends to retire after cutting hair in Burbank for 50 years.

(2) Of Hichens, shown working on David Bingham's mane in the mirror, one longtime customer says, ``There are a lot of people in this town who are going to really miss this guy. He's special.''

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer