Mary’s Hair Design found a new home in Lansford.

Owner Mary Burrell, who lives in Lansford, relocated and downsized her shop to 731 E. Ridge St. after 21 years in Tamaqua.

A wooden sign with Mary’s Hair Design hangs on a pole in the front yard of the quiet, residential neighborhood, and another sign hangs adjacent to the door of the shop.

Burrell has been doing hair for 50 years, and doesn’t plan on retiring anytime soon. Some of her clients have been with her for decades, and now are in their 90s, she said.

A full service shop, she does cuts, colors, highlights, perms, formal styles and wash and sets, Burrell said. She doesn’t, however, do what she calls “party colors,” or the shades of the rainbow.

“There’s enough young (stylists) doing them,” she laughed.

Burrell attended Jim Thorpe High School and the Carbon County Career & Technical Institute, where she got her cosmetology license. She also went back and got her teaching certificate, she said.

“I always thought about (teaching) but I know how frustrated my teacher was trying to teach everybody,” Burrell said. “It’s not an easy thing to teach.”

Instead, Burrell started her career as a beautician at Holiday Hair Fashions, and then they were bought out by Happy Day Beauty Salon in Hometown, where she worked for 22 years, she said.

But she never gave up on the dream of owning her own shop, and with the support of her family made the move, opening Mary’s Hair Design on Pine Street in Tamaqua, where she spent two decades.

Burrell believes it’s the people that keep her in the business after so much time.

“I like the camaraderie with the people,” she said. “There’s some people I have been doing (their hair) for 35 or 40 years.”

Seeing people week to week, talk often turns to their families and sharing news about their children and grandchildren, she said. Her clients also ask her about her family as well, she said.

Not all of her clients followed her when she moved the shop to Lansford in October, but many did.

They are, after all, like family.

And it’s a move that she wanted to make, and looks forward to many more years serving her clients and the community.

The shop is open Mondays from 12 to 7 p.m., Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Burrell no longer works Saturdays.

“I have no intention of retiring,” Burrell said.