It is more or less business as usual at Colin of London, the Oak Street barbershop/salon that has for decades catered to the tonsorial needs of generations of movers and shakers.
More or less, for the man who was the heart and soul of the business is no longer there. Colin Middleditch, 89, who worked in the Gold Coast neighborhood for more than half a century, a distinguished looking, white-mopped man of immense personality who referred to himself as “The Mayor of Oak Street,” died Sunday, Aug. 17, in his Glenview home.
He had suffered from a variety of ailments and the ravages of age in recent years, according to his wife. But he remained a frequent presence at his shop until very recently.
“There are no tears,” said his stepdaughter Lisa Binder, who has worked at the salon for roughly 30 years. “This place is filled with many great memories and so many of our customers telling great Colin stories.”
Colin Victor Middleditch was born in Bury St. Edmunds, an ancient town northeast of London, on Aug. 6, 1925. One of five children of a house painter father who worked mostly in London and a homemaker mother, he recalled that as a teenager he would watch German bombers fly overhead on their destructive way to London.
As he would often tell customers and visitors to his shop, he was in grammar school when he began an apprenticeship to a barber and later plied that trade until joining the war effort as a navy shipman.
He cut hair in London until being lured to Chicago by a job offer in the early 1950s. He would tell stories about standing at Oak and Rush streets, with “$3 in my pocket and a lot of dreams in my head,” before starting work at the Continental, an upscale barbershop on Delaware Place.
A few years later he traveled to New York City, according to a short biography on his salon’s website, where he was named “Men’s Hair Stylist of the Year” at the 1959 National Barber Show. (He subsequently held that organization’s title of “World Cup Champion Hairstylist for Men.”)
By the 1970s he was operating his own shop on the south side of Oak Street. In 1979, a young divorced mother of two walked in and asked for a job.
“If you marry me, I’ll give you a job,” Cleo Middleditch recalled him saying.
He wasn’t kidding.
“It was love at first sight,” his wife said. “For both of us.”
Within a month the couple married and, along with Cleo’s teenage daughter Lisa, moved into a home in Evanston, his wife said. An older son, Michael Binder, was off at college.
“He was my friend, a pal. And we made great mischief together,” Lisa Binder said.
After he moved his operation across Oak Street to its current location in 1986 and began offering full salon services for a female clientele, Cleo went to work alongside her husband.
“We lived and worked and loved together,” she said. “He made it all so easy.”
Lisa Binder would join her parents in the business in the mid-1980s as receptionist, eventually becoming manager and manicurist — Michael is a practicing psychiatrist in the northern suburbs — and the trio, along with other employees, created a place where, as Cleo said, “our customers are not clients. They were more than friends. They are family.”
“That’s true. It really is less salon than like a clubhouse,” said longtime customer Kathleen Murray of the nearby Streeterville neighborhood. “Everybody seems to know each other, and the conversations are always more than lively and filled with good gossip.”
Those walking in, regulars and strangers, were invariably greeted by Colin saying, “Good day, chap,” “How are you, sir?” or “Hello, governor,” and also with a song. “My father loved to sing,” said Lisa.
Over the decades, those regulars included all manner of celebrities, including movie stars such George Hamilton when he was in town; ditto Boy George. Real estate mogul Arthur Rubloff was a regular, as was radio legend Paul Harvey.
As his health began to decline — in 2008 he lost a portion of a leg due to an infection — he remained a bundle of optimism and energy, whether visiting the shop or, increasingly, the hospital.
“He spread his cheer everywhere he went,” his stepson said. “He came to be known not as a patient but as the man who loved to sing and entertain.”
Mr. Middleditch and his shop were featured on TV, radio and print over the years. On a local TV news segment filmed when he was 86, he said, “I like being a barber because I meet such wonderful people. I shall never retire. They’ll have to bury me with my scissors and combs.”
He is also survived by two grandchildren.
Services have been held.
