Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Jim Kooper prepares to greet a customer at his University Avenue Style Barber Shop.

Still there after all these years

University Avenue barber followed in dad's footsteps

By Bob Aldrich

If his father, a Greek immigrant, hadn't had his name changed when he came through New York's Ellis Island, Jim Kooper would have been born Jim Koukouresous.

"The immigration officers gave them American names in those days," says Kooper, veteran Los Gatos barber, who is celebrating the 50th year his University Avenue Style Barber Shop has trimmed hair at the same location, 606 University Ave.

"I figure we are the third oldest business in Los Gatos to be in the same place without moving," he said. Proprietors of the other two businesses, both friends of Kooper's, are Ron Fink, manager of the oldest business in town, the Macabee Gopher Trap Co., and John Sorenson of Sorenson Plumbing on W. Main Street.

The cozy two-chair shop is the scene of friendly socializing as well as haircutting and styling. When a reporter dropped in, Kooper and Jim Greenfeld, owner of Los Gatos Air Conditioning, were deep in sports talk.

"I've cut hair for 20 or 25 of the same Los Gatos families for years," the stocky, bearded barber said.

"My father, Bill--nobody ever called him William--opened the shop in 1947. I started working with him in 1959 when I was 19." Bill Kooper died of cancer in 1961 at the age of 48.

"This was going to be temporary," his son said. "I was just going to work here awhile to help out my mother and sisters. I found I liked it and stayed on." As a boy, he had held a variety of jobs like prune-picking, delivering orange juice and working at a Richfield station on Highway 9.

He graduated from Los Gatos High School in 1958.

Kooper and his wife, Ginny, are the parents of two daughters, Danielle and Keryn. Ginny Kooper has deep roots in Los Gatos. Her great-great-grandfather came here in 1870.

Jim's father, Bill, was 11 or 12 when he arrived in this country from Greece. He grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., before heading for California. "My dad was here in the 1930s depression and worked at different jobs," Kooper said.

Among Kooper's many customers at the shop have been the late Marutha Menuhin, the mother of Sir Yehudi Menuhin, and several of the executive officers of the San Francisco 49ers, Kooper said.

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