Mary Burrell is celebrating 20 years of making people look their best from her salon, Mary’s Hair Designs in Tamaqua.

“I just like the people. You get to know them over the years. It’s almost like they are all part of the family,” said Burrell, of Lansford.

While she’s been in business at 217 Pine St. since November of 2002, she has been a beautician for more than four decades.

She attended Jim Thorpe High School and the Carbon County Career & Technical Institute, and had her cosmetology license when she graduated.

“It’s something I always wanted to do,” she said.

Burrell immediately got to work.

“Beehive” hairdos were all the rave when she got her first job, she remembered. The style called for the hair to be teased into a mound atop the head and coated with a lot of hair spray. Women typically had them “done” once a week.

“They would have to last,” Burrell smiled. “They used to wrap their heads with toilet paper before they went to sleep.”

The technique would help the hairdo stay in place.

“I had one client who used to have her hair done (in a beehive) every Saturday, and she told me that the only good sleep she would get was on a Friday night,” she said.

Burrell worked at the former Happy Day Beauty Salon in Hometown for 22 years and raised her children David Burrell III and Rachel Barron.

“One went to college. The other went to college, and I thought ‘This is my time to do my thing’,” she said of her dream of opening her own shop. “It’s scary when you open your own business but my husband (David Burrell Jr.) and my kids were behind me.”

Many of her clients from Happy Day Hair Salon followed her to the shop, where she washes and sets, cuts, colors, perms and highlights hair.

“I have been seeing them for 38 or 40 years,” she said. A few clients, she said, are in their late 90s.

“They become part of your family because you hear so much about their families,” Burrell said.

In her time, she’s seen many styles rise to popularity.

Burrell was never a fan of mohawks, and said she’s happy that not many request line cuts - or styles where designs are cut into the hair.

“Cuts from years ago sometimes come back. They are just like clothes, they go back around,” she said.

She said she enjoys making people feel better and often snaps “before” and “after” photos of her clients.

Like other businesses, Burrell had to close her shop down during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

“I was closed for four months,” Burrell said. “There were a lot of woman who didn’t come back right away because they were afraid they would catch COVID.”

Some didn’t return for more than a year.

Burrell, who has grandchildren Charlie and William Burrell, and Chase and Tyler Barron, said she doesn’t have plans to retire anytime soon.

Mary’s Hair Designs is open Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.