The sound of laughter spills out of Buddy Love's Barber Shop and onto Highland Avenue on Muncie's east side.
It's a Saturday morning in early November and the shop is packed. "It's always like this early in the month," Love said. "People get their assistance checks and come to the shop to get their hair cut."
Inside the two-chair shop, customers from the neighborhood wait for their turn in Love's (whose real name is Anthony Watkins) chair.
The men, most of whom Love grew up with, are sharing memories from their childhood while Love works his way through the customers, laughing at their stories as he goes.
Things weren't always this good for Love, however. He was arrested while still in high school for what he calls "a mistake."
"I was young and didn't know any better," Love said.
He served eleven years at Pendelton Correctional Facility in Pendelton, Ind., and eighteen months at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Carlisle, Ind.
While in prison he came to the realization that education is important.
"School was just an option for me to sell whatever product I had stolen the night before," Love said. "I got there at twelve, put my head on the table and fell asleep for the last two hours."
In prison, Love earned his G.E.D., a barber's license and a bachelor's degree in speech communication from Ball State University with minors in history and psychology.
After getting out of prison Love opened his shop with the help of his mother, Constance Scott, and his extended family.
He sees his shop as a way to give back to the community that has given him a second chance, which is why he put a second chair in the shop.
Love sees the chair as his way to give a young man a second chance and the potential to change his life.
"I don't think you have to save a nation," Love said. "You just have to save one man and he can save another and then you have a chance to save the entire community."
It's the community Love focuses on now, whether he's donating his time to cut hair at a church's back-to-school party, going to an ill regular customer's home on his day off to cut his hair or simply congratulating a boy on earning straight A's on his report card.
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