Tag: Theodora’s Wigs

Best of BlogOKC in 2025

Editor’s note: As the curtain closes on 2025, I’ve gone through everything written on BlogOKC for the past year for my annual ‘best of’ column in which I select what I consider to be the best 10 of the year. In looking at the posts, I see a trend in what appeals to me for subject matter: nostalgia. Maybe I look back too often for topics that interest me, but that’s a lot of what I write about. Enjoy the top 10:

Frank Day’s labor of love honors the dying art of quilting

Frank Day works on a hand-stitched quilt, accompanied by one of his favorite pets.

A personal favorite right at the top. I discovered that my long-time friend Frank Day from Roland, OK, has become a prolific quilter. Today Frank is 75 years old and retired after more than two decades as fleet sales manager for Fort Smith’s Randall Ford. I think he can best be described in 2025 as a one-man quilting bee. That’s right. Frank Day began hand-stitching beautiful quilts over two decades ago, and continues his quilting avocation today.  Read it here.

Best of the best: Top 10 episodes of the Andy Griffith Show

Andy Griffith and Don Knotts from an episode of The Andy Griffith Show

This post is on its way to becoming one of BlogOKC’s most read posts of all time. Here’s the first few sentences: “If I look at my friend Ed and say ‘how do you do Mrs. Wiley?’ he will know exactly what I am saying. In fact, he might reply with something like ‘I would recognize that accent anywhere. It’s definitely Back Bay Boston.’ Ed and I are true geezers, which means each of us has crossed over the retirement bridge and can indulge in pasttimes as we choose. And one of those is watching the Andy Griffith Show. Read it here.

Breaking News: Grape Nehi lives in 2025!

I discovered this bottle of grape Nehi during a recent visit to an OKC Cracker Barrel store.

So that brings me to August 2025. I discovered Cracker Barrel sells grape Nehi among the many nostalgic candy and soda brands it offers. When we arrived at the store along I-35 in far north OKC, it was filled with customers, and we had about a 35-minute wait for a table. As I sauntered through the store during our wait, I stumbled upon a soda display that had a grape Nehi right in the middle. Grape Nehi lives! Read it here.

Best of Barney: Quoting the greatest sitcom character in television history

Barney consoles Andy with a heart-to-heart talk

My friend Ed Godfrey shared what he considers to be the best 10 Barney Fife lines from the old Andy Griffith show. Here’s how he started the post. “The best sitcom character in the history of television is Barney Fife, played by the great Don Knotts. I’m sorry, if you don’t agree, you’re wrong.”  Read it here.

Theodora’s Elegante Wigs thrives amid generational ch-ch-changes

Linda (Faubus) Lewis is surrounded by wig-covered mannequin heads at her Theodora’s Elegante Wigs shop.

Another personal favorite because it reaches way back to my high school days. “When I saw the ‘Theodora’s Wigs” sign as I was driving past in Fort Smith, Ark., this week, it took me back more than 55 years into an earlier life. So, I veered off Towson Ave., into the Phoenix retail center lot and parked outside the wig shop. Read it here

Meet the International Man of Mystery from Stigler, OK

Hershel Prentice at recent OKC Thunder game

If you ask Stigler, OK, native Hershel Prentice where in the world he’s been lately, he’ll gladly tell you. Dubai? Check. Oman? Check? Poland? Check. Austria? Check. Germany? Check, Newfoundland? Check? Labrador? Check. Check. Check. Whew! And that’s just this year. Read it here.

Gov. Stitt, let’s value lives over dollars


I don’t often take a political position in this blog, but when Gov. Stitt vetoed legislation that expands access for women to imaging technology that can detect breast cancer, I had to speak up. I called my legislators urging them to help overturn Gov. Stitt’s veto of legislation that expands access for women to imaging technology that can detect breast cancer. My wife, Paula, a breast cancer survivor, called our legislators, as well. Then I published this post. Read it here.

Customer service, without the ‘service’

The tail of an American Airlines jet

More BlogOKC advocacy from a January post: Call me an entitled American, if you like, but there seems to be a wide gulf these days between the words “customer” and “service” in our society. I’m talking about when you call the “customer service” line of a major corporation and have to work through 15 AI bots that can’t help with any of your issues before a human finally comes on the line. Today, I’m ranting about a recent experience with the customer service department at American Airlines. (American fixed the problem after this post was published) Read it here.

Dunning-Kruger Effect: I knew it all until I realized I didn’t

When I graduated high school in 1971 — in the bottom half of my class academically — I plunged into my future thinking I pretty much knew everything I needed to know and could handle anything coming my way. However, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.  Read it here.

London Homesick Blues puts me back in that place
Some college nostalgia: Back to 2025. I’m not sure how or why, but I began listening to “London Homesick Blues” on replay over the course of the past couple of months. A wave of nostalgia washes over me when I hear it, and it really does take me back to that place — the ACU campus and the people with whom I shared classes and The Optimist newsroom. Read it here.

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Aging Well: 3 Old Geezers Podcast returns
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Theodora’s Elegante Wigs thrives amid generational ch-ch-changes

Linda (Faubus) Lewis is surrounded by wig-covered mannequin heads at her Theodora’s Elegante Wigs shop.

When I saw the ‘Theodora’s Wigs” sign as I was driving past in Fort Smith, Ark., this week, it took me back more than 55 years into an earlier life. So, I veered off Towson Ave., into the Phoenix retail center lot and parked outside the wig shot.

No, I wasn’t there to find some faux hair to cover my chrome dome.

Let me explain the back story.

In the fall of 1970, I was a senior at Southside High School in Fort Smith and worked at a small retail shop called Tom’s Levi’s in what was then known as the Phoenix Village Shopping Center. It was next door to Theodora’s Elegante Wigs.

Our shops were connected by a back hallway, so I became friends with Theodora’s owners, Thelma Faubus and her daughter, Linda. They were positive and upbeat and kind to this 17-year-old kid with little retail experience or maturity.

I worked at that shop until 1972, then went on to college and a newspaper career that eventually brought me to OKC. But my parents continued to live in Fort Smith, and that’s why I was in town this week, celebrating my widowed mom’s 92nd birthday.

Over the vast expanse of years, I’ve seen many changes to the Phoenix Village Shopping Center where Theodora’s is located and I once worked. One whole portion of the strip center across the parking lot from the wig shop was torn down. A grocery store on the west end of the center is long gone. The adjacent Phoenix Village Mall shut down and now is used as call center space by various companies. The center’s original developers died and ownership groups changed. The name of the strip center was shortened to just Phoenix Center.

Through it all, Theodora’s Elegante Wigs stayed in business, holding down the same tiny retail space it’s had since 1967.

That drew me in on this November day. When I parked and walked through Theodora’s door, there was Linda Faubus seated behind the counter. She is now Linda Lewis and she runs the shop as the sole owner in the wake of her mother’s passing a few years ago.

“Linda Faubus!” I said as I entered. “I’m Jim Stafford.”

She jumped up and gave me a big hug. I told her I was there to find out how the shop had stayed in business across all those years and amid changes the retail environment.

We were surrounded by mannequin heads covered by wigs of various colors and lengths. The shop looked almost exactly as I remembered from more than 50 years ago.  Along with her late mother, Linda has owned the shop since 1967.

“How have you kept this shop going for almost 60 years,” I asked. “You’ve outlasted virtually ever business that was here in the 1970s and outlived most of their owners. What’s your secret to the longevity of your business?”

“it’s from making a lot of friends, being good to people and quality and service,” Linda said. “They like to come in here.”

Many longtime, loyal customers were drawn to the shop by her mother, Thelma, she said. I could see that because Thelma was such an upbeat personality and treated everyone with what you might call Southern charm.

Thelma passed away in 2016 at the age of 97.

“Everybody loved her, and that’s how you build a business” Linda said. “She was my role model and was a very attractive lady. You have to build on customer service and how you treat people.”

I looked around the shop. I wanted to know how business is in 2025. Linda has modernized enough to have a presence on Facebook. 

“We’re busier now than we’ve ever been,” she said. “We have customers from all over, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Fayetteville, Bella Vista. I can’t tell you how many people come in from Springdale.”

Who knew there was such a demand for wigs?

“There aren’t that many wig shops any more,” Linda said. “And people love to come in and try them on.”

The exterior to Theodora’s Elegante Wigs in Fort Smith, Ark.

Next door to the wig shop, in the space that Tom’s Levi’s once occupied, is a bridal shop.

“I can’t tell you have many businesses have been in that space,” she said. “A stereo shop, a business called The Gentry Shop and even a doll shop.”

With that, we said our goodbyes and I headed back to my car and on to OKC. One last glance at the Theodora’s Wigs sign as I drove away.

It seems that everything in this world has changed over the past 55 years, except Theodora’s Elegante Wigs. And that made me smile as I pulled back on to Towson Ave.

Not just a survivor, but a thriving business in a completely different generation.

Well done Linda (and Thelma).