Charlie Wilson’s MVL
Photo: MVL
Charlie Wilson: barber, community builder, mentor. Charlie cuts hair beside his uncle, Eric Simelton, at Main Street Barber & Hairstyling in Mooresville, NC.
Where are you from?: “I was born here. I lived in Concord for about half of my life.. then I came back.”
What brought you back to Mooresville?: “The area’s nice, down-to-earth. You can pretty much walk anywhere and don’t feel harm…that’s one reason. Another is, I just have a lot of family in the area. So you know, family love and all that.”
Favorite thing about living here?: “The peace. Just being able to go outside and relax. You don’t have a lot of chaos. It’s just calm, cool and collected here. And the people are nice. Nobody walks around snubby nosed and stuck up. Everybody’s nice. Everybody speaks. It’s safe and down-to-earth.”
How'd you get involved with the barbershop?: “Eric happens to be my uncle, so that made it a lot easier. But what got me cutting hair, and you know, pretty much putting all my life into it, was an idea he shot out to me. It was high school basketball season, and we had a game that day, and I came in here and he asked me what I was going to do with myself after high school. I told him, “Hey, I don’t know. I’m young, I’m not really thinking about that right now.” And he was like, “Why don’t you come and be a barber?” I graduated, and time was creepin up on me. So I said, well let me just try something. I just took a leap of faith. I’ve been doing it for eleven years now…paying bills, taking care of my three kids, cutting hair. It’s been a blessing.”
Best perk of the job?: “The people. They come from all different backgrounds. I like talking with them. Actually, being a barber is a bit like being a counselor. I hear a lot of problems, a lot of things that people are going through. Sometimes people come here with a lot of stuff on their heart. It can be negative or it can be positive. They come here and they share it with us. And by the time they leave the barbershop… they may have come in dark but they’re leaving with a lot of light.”
What’s it like working in Downtown Mooresville?: “Working on main street is amazing. You see a lot of people...you see different cultures. And It’s fun to see how people come here and react to Eric. There’s a lot of life up here. It doesn’t seem like it, but it’s a lot of life. There’s a lot of happy people. And on the flip side, there’s a lot of stress and depressed people. And like I said, that’s where we come in and just listen to what they go through.”
What’s your MVL?: “Being able to interact with the kids and the community. A lot of kids come in here from middle school and high school, and they feel safe talking to us because they know we’ve experienced a lot of different things and we talk to a lot of different people. They tell us things they might not tell their parents. It’s kind of like we’ve got a big brother program without having a big brother program. It’s a lot of trust.”
What are you proud of?: “We kind of change lives here, little do we know. Just off of a little conversation. To me, that’s everything.”
