Shawna Bleecker | Capital Journal staff

PIERRE — Barbara Madden’s friends oohed and aahed over her freshly cut and curled hair last night at the Community Banquet dinner at the Southeast Community Center.

“My husband hasn’t seen it curled since we were married,” she said. Madden and her husband were married two years ago this Valentine’s Day.

Shawna Bleecker | Capital Journal Zoe Jones (left) a beautician from Creative Cuts, consults her at-the-moment client Deb Simbreck on her cut and style Thursday night at the Southeast United Methodist Church and Community Center during the Beauty and the Banquet event, hosted by the APT book club. Advertisement

Madden — along with more than 20 other girls and women at the banquet — took part in Beauty at the Banquet, a look-good, feel-good event members of the APT (As the Pages Turn) Book club came up with after reading “Same Kind of Different As Me,” by Ron Hall and Denver Moore.

“It is a beautiful story of faith, fortitude and friendship,” event coordinator and book club member Vonnie Shields said.

After reading the book the group decided to host the event and picked the Community Banquet as their venue.

“We got five beauticians on board — each donating two hours, one donating four hours,” Shields said.

For four hours the five volunteer beauticians, Laurie Bradner and Celeste Gageby, from Hair Affair; Staci Holden and Zoe Jones from Creative Cuts and Dawn Koch from J.C. Penny’s, rotated women through the stylists room, trimming, cutting, blow-drying and curling hair.

“Haircuts always make people feel better,” Holden said as she set up her station, which consisted of a card table and chair, a propped-up mirror and a power strip. Two more similar stations filled the room.

The tight squeeze in the room was no matter for the beauticians, however, as they chatted and laughed with the clients being pampered. 

“I think it’s wonderful to provide this service to the community,” said Koch, who said she would do it again.

“I’m so excited about this and I think everyone who (came) to the banquets is excited,” said the community center’s activities director Laurie Bonhorst. “The stylists who are volunteering their time are wonderful.”

The banquet also held another pampering delight for women and girls as in another room, members of the book club volunteered their time to give manicures.

“It is a chance to make a special night for (these) women and girls,” Shields said. 

“Doing nails has been kind of fun,” said book club member Kristi Vensand Hall. “They are pleased with what we do and they are having so much fun.”

After getting their fingernails trimmed, filed and painted, the women and girls took away a “goodie-bag” filled to the brim with small bottles of shampoo, conditioner, lotion and the bottle of fingernail polish of their choice.

“This is great,” a Southeast United Methodist Church and Community Center lay minister said. “We like having this kind of thing down here.”