When Lexee Cooke was in the hospital to have her tonsils removed, she met another little girl who had no hair.

Being a six-year-old, she is impressionable, and never forgot the other little girl.

“We were standing in the bathroom and I was fixing her hair one day, and she said, ‘I want to cut my hair off.’ She has had long hair all of her life. She was literally born with a head-full of hair,” her aunt Julie Hutchinson said. “I said, ‘You can donate your hair,’ and she asked me what I meant.”

That’s when Hutchinson discussed the little girl sitting in a wheelchair, wearing a Hannah Montana shirt and hat.

“She said, ‘that’s what I want to do,’” Hutchinson said. “And then a couple of days later she got nervous about it and he said, ‘I’m not sure I want to do that,’ and I said, ‘you don’t have to. We can just cut off a little bit like we always have to keep it above your waist.’”

It wasn’t long after that when Hutchinston took Lexee to Classi Image Hair Spa for her first real professional haircut. That’s where Lexee, who had hair below her waste at the time, made the decision to donate her hair.

“When we got finished her eyes were as big as a fifty-cent piece,” Hutchinson said. “But she likes her new do. She had fun.”

Lexee knows exactly what is going to be done with the hair.

“I’m going to donate it to Locks for Love,” Lexee said. “It’s to make wigs for little kids because they have cancer.”

Sending hair to Locks For Love isn’t new for Cortne Huffman-Wagner owner/operator of Classi Image Hair Spa.

“I have two other girls that did that, and I literally still have their hair here. I haven’t even sent it off yet,” Huffman-Wagner said. “One of them is Andi Queen, and the other is Skylar Blair. They both are about the same age (11). Lexee is the youngest of the three.”

Huffman-Wagner said there is a process for sending the hair to the charity.

“We print a form out on the computer off the internet for Locks of Love, and fill it out and send it,” Huffman-Wagner said. “Locks of Love makes wigs for cancer patients. And it can be a child, a man, a woman. It’s a really good organization.”

“I think it’s pretty noble of kids that age to do something like that,” Huffman-Wagner said.

Locks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 21 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis.

Frank Lewis may be reached at (740) 353-3101, ext. 232 or flewis@

heartlandpublications.com.