ShawneeDispatch.com

Photo by Caroline Boyer

Mindy Ruff clips 14 inches of hair off of Donna Gray.

As a hairdresser for 30 years, Donna Gray of Shawnee is no stranger to haircuts.

However, last week, Gray was on the receiving end of a cut that she hoped would help others. At a downtown Shawnee hair salon, Gray gave her hair to be donated to Locks of Love — one last, small goal accomplished for her life as she battles a terminal illness.

“Being in the hair business, I’ve known about Locks of Love; I know it makes a lot of little kids happy to get some hair,” she said. “So if I can just make one of them feel better, then it was worth it.”

Gray grew up in the Shawnee area and graduated from Shawnee Mission Northwest High School. She owned her own salon, The Hair Experience, in Mission before her illness forced her to quit and sell the salon to a friend.

Gray has been sick much of her life, dealing with a disease that causes her blood to stop producing components needed in the immune system. Then, two years ago, she was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, a disease characterized by the development and growth of tiny clumps of inflammatory cells in different areas of your body.

Gray’s sarcoidosis is affecting her lungs, causing scar tissue to build up there that eventually will cause her to suffocate. There is no cure for either disease, and while there are treatments for both, Gray says the treatments for her two diseases work against one another.

Both diseases also make her unfit to be an organ donor. So Gray, who has always preferred to keep her hair long, asked her sister to make sure her hair was donated to Locks of Love, which creates wigs for children who have lost their hair due to illness, after her death.

“Then I decided, ‘Why wait until I’m gone, why not do it while I’m still here so I can enjoy the feeling?’ So I did,” Gray said.

Her sister, Lindy Miroch, happened to know of a salon that would provide the service at no charge. Miroch lives in Wisconsin but is often in Shawnee to visit her son and Gray, and she had become a customer at Heaven on Earth Salon, 11004 Johnson Drive.

There, owner Mindy Ruff cut 14 inches of Gray’s hair on June 24 to mail it to the Locks of Love organization in Florida. Gray’s two daughters and grandson joined her and Miroch for the experience.

“That was kind of a surprise,” Gray said. “My sister said she wanted to ‘make it big.’”

Gray said one of the accomplishments of her life she was most proud of was building The Hair Experience from the ground up, and she is happy that the salon continues to do well under her friend’s ownership.

“That feels good to have established something, and it carries on, even though I’m not there anymore,” she said.

But her donation to Locks of Love is an act that will have a lasting effect, as well.

“It felt good to give,” Gray said. “It does feel good to give.”

Sidebar:

Donna Gray isn’t the only Shawneean who has recently supported Locks of Love. Michelle Distler, Ward IV Shawnee City Council member, also gave 12 inches of her hair to the organization June 6.

Distler said she has been concerned about the issue since grade school, when she had a classmate who lost her hair because of an illness. A few years ago Distler learned about Locks of Love, and she decided to grow her hair out for the organization, remembering her classmate.

“This is something I definitely wanted to do, because I knew how (being bald) would affect her,” Distler said.

She said it took about three years to grow her hair long enough, since Locks of Love requires donations to be at least 10 inches. After getting the cut, Distler said she decided she would like to continue growing her hair and make donations as often as she can.

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