A Purpose-Driven Life – Pittsburgh Quarterly

Arnold Zegarelli would most likely agree with the adage: “discover a job you get pleasure from doing, and also you’ll by no means must work a day in your life.” For 66 years till his retirement in November on the age of 85, that’s exactly what he did. Wearing a swimsuit and tie, a pocket sq. tucked neatly into the pocket of his jacket, Zegarelli lower hair, first on the salon at Joseph Horne’s Division Retailer after which at Premier Salon (each lengthy gone) earlier than becoming a member of the crew at Izzazu Salon as director of training in 2004. Homeowners Emilio Cornacchione and Gino Chiodo, two of his proteges, confer with Zegarelli as their pseudo-father, which isn’t shocking since he set an instance in his private life that each have tried to emulate. Telling is a chunk of needlepoint Zegarelli had framed for considered one of his salons plenty of years in the past: “The most effective factor a father can do for his kids is to like their mom.”

Over the course of his storied profession, Zegarelli has mentored tons of of hairdressers, not solely serving to them excellent their technical expertise but additionally instructing them learn how to costume professionally — “Like begets like,” he says — or talk successfully. For years he requested the hairdressers who labored for him to begin their day by studying the entrance web page of The Wall Avenue Journal and USA At this time so they may stick with it an clever dialog with their upscale purchasers. Underneath his tutelage, some opened their first financial savings account to place away sufficient cash for an enormous buy, say, an vehicle or, finally, a house of their very own.

A voracious reader — the whole lot from Dale Carnegie’s “The right way to Win Pals and Affect Individuals” to Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Energy of Optimistic Pondering” and Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Extremely Efficient Individuals” — Zegarelli has revealed two books of his personal. “Diamond Capsules for Success and Knowledge” is a group of motivational concepts and quotes. “Your coronary heart must be in what you do,” he says. “That’s the important thing.” He additionally collaborated together with his son Gregg, an area lawyer, on “The Important Aesop,” which reimagines a number of the traditional Aesop’s Fables for anybody longing to reconcile life’s essential questions.

“I believe I used to be placed on earth to assist folks understand their potential,” says the Z-Man (his nickname for himself). On his Fb web page he posts maxims akin to this one from Thomas Jefferson: “In issues of fashion, swim with the present. In issues of precept, stand like a rock.” An avid Steelers fan, Zegarelli additionally makes use of his web page to weigh in on sport day and, true to kind, stays constructive it doesn’t matter what the ultimate rating.

“By no means criticize, condemn or complain,” says Zegarelli, who calls these vices the Three C’s (he’s massive on acronyms). Feeling depressed or discouraged? His recommendation is to look into your BAG (Blessings, Accomplishments and Targets) to drag your self out of a hunch.

Although he declines to drop names, Zegarelli’s clientele has included any variety of Pittsburgh’s movers and shakers. Nonetheless, it’s no secret that considered one of his greatest followers was Barbara Cloud, longtime trend editor for The Pittsburgh Press and later a columnist for the Pittsburgh Submit-Gazette, who remembered holding her son in her lap whereas Zegarelli gave him his first haircut.

Zegarelli’s weight hasn’t fluctuated quite a lot of kilos in 50 years (he at all times orders salad dressing on the facet), and he will get up at 5 each morning to raise weights in his dwelling gymnasium and observe tai chi. Then he engages in what he calls a silent “life evaluate,” conducting a psychological stock of the areas in his life that want enchancment — well being, wealth, household, profession, training, diet, train. “They’re all inside our management,” he says. Lastly, he holds every member of his household in his thoughts whereas asking himself how he may be useful.

Born to Italian immigrant mother and father, Zegarelli credit his father, Erasmontonio, for instilling the primary of many invaluable life classes in his sons. In the future when all 4 of them had been preventing, his father marched them outdoors to the backyard. Gathering 4 twigs from a tree, he snapped one in two. “See, alone each is simple to interrupt,” he stated earlier than trying, with out success, to interrupt all 4 on the identical time. “Alone you weak, collectively you robust,” he identified, although the demonstration itself was most likely sufficient to drive the purpose dwelling.

Zegarelli describes his relationship together with his youthful brother, Robert, who adopted him into the hairdressing career, as particularly shut. “Robert was all coronary heart, whereas I used to be very technical,” he says. “Collectively we made one actually good hairdresser.”

Seligman & Latz, which operated magnificence salons below a lease association with department shops everywhere in the nation, employed the duo as educators within the Fifties, and in 1961 they opened a sophisticated haircutting college for Pittsburgh Magnificence Academy referred to as Hairstyle Creation Academy. It was on a visit to London for a magnificence business commerce present that they met Vidal Sassoon, who instructed them that hairdressing was out and haircutting was in. Sassoon’s recommendation: Return to Pittsburgh, elevate your costs and market yourselves as haircutters.

“He instructed us we’d most likely lose all our purchasers, however that it could be a turning level,” says Zegarelli, “and he was proper.” When their costs jumped from $5 to $15 for a haircut, most of their purchasers went elsewhere, however earlier than lengthy the brothers started attracting a extra progressive clientele who wished the geometric cuts from London that could possibly be styled with a easy shake of the pinnacle.

When his brother died of a coronary heart assault in 1981, Zegarelli took it exhausting. “We have been like a pair of scissors,” he says. “After he died it felt like one of many blades was lacking.” To assuage his grief, he started finding out martial arts with Grand Grasp C.S. Kim in Monroeville, in the end incomes a black belt. “You’re one powerful outdated monk,” the grasp instructed his pupil on the time. “I didn’t suppose you’d make it at your age.”

Now that he’s retired, Zegarelli plans to spend extra time together with his spouse, Dolores. The couple has been married for 64 years. “She is probably the most great, unselfish lady on the planet,” he says. “She helped me obtain each objective I ever had whereas additionally elevating our two kids.” Except for his son Gregg, he additionally has a daughter, Ronda, who owns Acrobatique, a inventive occasions company. Gregg and his spouse Jodi have three teenage daughters, and Zegarelli says, “I’ve an incredible relationship with every of them.”

Zegarelli believes that the whole lot from our grammar and manners to etiquette and phrase selections are the hallmarks of self-development. “We are able to select to be constructive,” he says, recalling how the boys in his Larimer Avenue neighborhood bullied him when he determined to turn out to be a hairdresser. “After they noticed me get off the streetcar with my little case of styling instruments, they began howling and laughing. I instructed them to get all of it out now as a result of I used to be going to do that, and I used to be going to achieve success.”

That angle has served him effectively all through his profession, which has included milestones like an eponymous product line he offered on the Dwelling Purchasing Community and common native tv appearances. Oprah’s producers booked him for makeover segments on her present, each in Baltimore and Chicago, and in 2010, he acquired the Pittsburgh Vogue Corridor of Fame award.

“No matter you vividly think about, ardently want, sincerely consider and enthusiastically act upon will inevitably come to go,” he says with absolutely the certainty of somebody wanting again on a rewarding life and profession that had nothing to do with luck and the whole lot to do with grit, willpower and a constructive angle.