advertisement

Why 85-year-old Naperville barber stays in the biz

Rick Motta slides a black-and-white striped cape around Tom Groves and the experience begins.

It starts with a razor and a comb, then moves to shears. A vacuum clears the clippings away, and it finishes with a brief massage.

The experience for Groves is a haircut, plain and simple, traditional and classic.

The experience for Motta is a haircut and something more — a living, a lifeblood, a purpose.

Barbering has been Motta's work for many of his 85 years, and it keeps him going. What he's after is a sense of vicarious gratification, of being the reason someone else is experiencing an enjoyable moment. It's the same feeling he gets from his other passion: performing.

“I enjoy the satisfaction I get out of singing and making people enjoy it,” Motta says.

When others are happy, Motta is happy. That's why his life has been built on pursuits that bring good feelings — a laugh at a comedic moment on stage, a sigh at that tingling feeling as shaver meets scalp.

“Everyone is rushing to get their life over with,” Motta says. “I slow them down a little bit and let them enjoy being relaxed.”

There aren't as many people he can please coming into his shop at 25 S. Washington St. in Naperville anymore, as he lost two-thirds of his business around the recession in 2008, and it's never come back.

“What I'm doing now is working for the landlord,” he says.

Yet he keeps at it. A man with long-ago Hollywood dreams that never truly died, Motta says he just doesn't know when the moment might arrive.

“Maybe some producer will see you and decide you're perfect for some role,” he says.

Or maybe the elusive producer will never show. But the idea of that possibility will remain, granting the motivation to brave the creaks and cracks of getting out of bed, the slow process of showering and stretching, the daily challenges of being an 85-year-old barber for another day, the reality of life. For Motta, that has been enough.

A natural barber

Growing up in Chicago, Motta spent his days in the movie houses. He'd go four or five times a week, absorbing all the acting highlights and blunders in double or triple features and keeping the techniques in his mind.

But it wasn't acting or singing he pursued after high school. It was cutting hair at Weeden's Barber College in Chicago, which since has closed.

His first barbering job on the South Side took too long to get to — it was two streetcar transfers away — and the business was slow. As a 19-year-old, he wanted action, not sitting around.

So he soon quit and signed on to dig trenches for People's Gas Light and Coke Company. After three days, the bosses found out he had a high school education and moved Motta into the shop for office work.

“I was not much for trenches,” he said.

Electrical sales wasn't his favorite, either. But he lasted four years at that — after getting married, serving in the military and briefly working as a laundry delivery driver, that is until he was asked to remove linens from a funeral home's embalming room.

It's not that Motta has always been a barber. But providing the pleasure of a good haircut has been the work he's always found the most fitting. Even now, at an age when retirement could seem the more natural move.

“I don't feel like I'm 85 when I'm here,” he says.

Singing like Sinatra

Motta married his now ex-wife, Jean, when he was 20, and together, they made a plan.

“I was going to pursue a singing career like Sinatra did, and even make it to the movies,” Motta said.

He snagged one exciting New York audition, but his timing was off. By the time he arrived in the Big Apple, the part he wanted had been cast. He never got to play Zoltan Karpathy, a singing, dancing rival of the phonetics professor in “My Fair Lady,” on the big stage.

He got a role at a professional theater in Highland Park when he was in his 30s with four kids. A producer he met there asked Jean if he could take her husband to Hollywood to promote his career. As Motta tells it, she said no.

He and Hollywood never quite connected.

Barbering businessman

Meanwhile, his barbering business took off.

He'd been working at a shop in Chicago after tiring of his other odd jobs when a friend called and asked if he could pick up a Saturday shift in Naperville, then a farming town of around 7,000.

“I said 'Naperwhere?'” Motta said of his reaction in 1957. “At that time, no one knew of Naperville in Chicago. It was not like it is now.”

He took the gig and was surprised to find a steady line of customers waiting throughout the day. He kept coming back to scope it out, wondering whether the busy day was just a fluke. But the townsmen of Naperville kept coming in for their haircuts. By 1961, he moved out west from the city to open his own shop just a block south of where he cuts hair now.

He got involved with the chamber of commerce and started the Last Fling festival 51 years ago as a way for business people to thank the community. He quenched his thirst for theater by forming the PK Players group of thespians through the fledgling Naperville Park District a couple of years later. He became a known commodity.

“We moved here in 1968, and he was already a celebrity,” says Groves of Naperville, who's still a customer all these years later.

But when Motta got divorced, he left the town where he was so well-liked and moved to Atlanta in 1976 to open a nightclub.

He missed the '80s in the suburbs, but “Naperwhere?” drew him back to work in a friend's shop in 1992. He opened his own shop on Jackson Avenue in 1997 and moved in 2000 to the location where he's still at, “working for the landlord.”

These days, Motta employs two other barbers — down from five in the shop's heyday. His space still holds six chairs — along with an extensive collection of National Geographic magazines, a couple of benches as a waiting area and at least three of those decorative red-and-white striped barber poles.

But most of all, it's got Motta, maybe humming the occasional tune, always engaging his customers in conversation. He's still focused on the joy he gains from helping them sit back, relax and enjoy — if not the show, as they say in the Hollywood culture he never quite attained, then at least the shave — for him, a satisfactory second.

“It's just a great, great traditional barber shop,” says occasional customer John Turnage of Loveland, Colorado, who makes sure to stop by when he's in town to visit his daughter and grandkids. “You leave feeling great.”

  John Turnage of Loveland, Colorado, checks out the shaving handiwork of 85-year-old Naperville barber Rick Motta. Motta loves singing, acting and making customers feel good, which is why he hasn't retired after decades in the business. Daniel White/dwhite@dailyherald.com
  Barber Rick Motta, left, was a "celebrity" in Naperville even in 1968, says longtime customer Tom Groves. Daniel White/dwhite@dailyherald.com
  Rick Motta, an 85-year-old barber, trims John Turnage's beard with a single-edge razor at his shop in Naperville. Although the shop lost many of its customers during the recession in 2008 and never recovered, Motta still loves the satisfaction he gets from making others feel good. Daniel White/dwhite@dailyherald.com
  Rick Motta lowers a hot towel onto John Turnage's face after a shave at the shop he runs in Naperville. Motta has been a barber in Naperville for 43 years. Daniel White/dwhite@dailyherald.com
  Rick Motta's Barber Shop has been a fixture in downtown Naperville for years - including 16 at its current location, 25 S. Washington St. Daniel White/dwhite@dailyherald.com
Article Comments
Guidelines: Keep it civil and on topic; no profanity, vulgarity, slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about tragedies will be blocked. If a comment violates these standards or our terms of service, click the "flag" link in the lower-right corner of the comment box. To find our more, read our FAQ.