Howard Fong, the legendary former co-owner of the venerable Carl’s Intercoiffure in Cross Keys whose clientele patronized his salon for decades, died of pneumonia and complications of COVID-19 on March 17 at Gwynedd Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. The former Towson resident was 93.
Betty Cooke, owner of The Store Ltd., an original Village of Cross Keys tenant, began going to Carl’s Intercoiffure in the 1940s.
“Howard was excellent and he made sure everything was done the way he wanted,” Ms. Cooke said. “He was very artistic and everything was to be done his way because he knew what was right.”
“Howard and my dad were innovators and leaders in their field. They were an interesting duo. Both were thinkers,” said Dr. Anna Sick Samuels, daughter of one of Carl’s Intercoiffure co-owners, Willmar Sick. “Both were very creative and they saw trends and new products.”
Howard Fong, the fifth of 12 children, was born in Wilmot, Arkansas, and raised in Marianna, Arkansas. He was the son of Gin Fong and Lillie Wong Fong, immigrants from mainland China.
His parents owned and operated a grocery and merchandise store that “served as a bridge between the white and Black communities,” said a daughter, Alexa Fong Drubay of Media, Pennsylvania.
Growing up, Mr. Fong worked in the family business, “which sold everything from cigarettes to Grandpa’s homemade chili,” according to a biographical profile.
After graduating from Marianna High School, he enlisted in the Air Force in 1948 and during the Korean War served as a flight crew chief heading maintenance and repair work on B-29 Superfortress bombers, the B-50 Superfortress and the B-36.
After being discharged in 1951, he moved to Baltimore to attend the old Baltimore School of Beauty Culture, earning his beautician certificate in 1954.
He was hired as a stylist by Carl Griesser, a Swiss national, who established Carl’s Intercoiffure in 1924 on Read Street, and later moved to an art deco building on North Charles Street in Mount Vernon.
Known as “Mr. Carl,” he sent Mr. Fong to L’Oreal in Paris to study hair coloring.
After retiring in 1959, Mr. Griesser sold the business to Mr. Fong and his partner, Willmar Sick, a chemist who mixed his own shampoos.
“He really was in the forefront,” Mr. Fong said of his partner in a 2004 interview with The Sun.
Known for its elegance, the salon had spacious private booths and hairdressers who wore tuxedos while tending to customers. The windows looking out on Charles Street offered seasonal, eye-catching, fashionably coifed mannequins.
“It was a high-class place,” Ms. Cooke recalled.
As downtown demographics were beginning to change, in 1965, Carl’s Intercoiffure became one of the original businesses to settle in the Village of Cross Keys, the North Baltimore shopping center that had been developed by James Rouse, that opened that year. The downtown location continued to operate for two more years until it was sold.
The salon moved again in 1993 to an upstairs location at Cross Keys where it developed into a full-service salon offering “hydro-active mineral salt body scrubs,” as well as “tints, perms, cuts and shampoos,” The Sun observed.
Carl’s Intercoiffure attracted not only a devoted local clientele, but also customers from as far away as New York City. Mr. Fong resisted entreaties from more than one first lady to come to the White House, family members said, preferring to stay in Baltimore.
“Howard was always very friendly, smiling and full of energy. I was very fond of him even though he could be opinionated,” Ms. Cooke said. “He could be very critical when it came to hair, but his customers knew he was right.”
Mr. Fong developed a reputation as being “tough on apprentices and employees,” according to the biographical profile, but it paid off as they opened successful salons of their own.
The partners threw an 80th anniversary party in 2004 at the salon that featured Champagne and hors d’oeuvres.
In 2013, after a successful 59-year partnership, Messrs Fong and Sick retired.
“Both were strong-willed and creative, and that made for a great partnership,” Dr. Samuels said. “They were close, and our families were close and loved one another.”
Throughout his life, Mr. Fong pursued many interests.
He learned to drive at 12, and as a young man, he enjoyed racing cars at the Dorsey Speedway. During his lifetime, family members said, he owned more than 30 cars, from old Triumphs to new Corvettes.
Mr. Fong was a self-taught architect and interior decorator who designed a much-acclaimed contemporary house on Bellona Avenue in Ruxton, as well as the interiors for the Cross Keys salon.
He won 4-H competitions for his Mexican sunflowers, zinnias, and elegant and whimsical floral arrangements, which were often the centerpiece of his daughter’s Cafe Drubay, which was also in Cross Keys.
In the early 1990s, Mr. Fong created a vegetable garden at his Hampton home near Towson.
“So, between neat rows of tomatoes and herbs, he planted flowers and shrubs. He built espaliers for fruit trees and rosemary and trellises for cucumbers,” The Sun wrote when his garden was selected as a 2008 contest winner.
Since 2017, Mr. Fong and his wife of 19 years, Ling Fong, a senior team leader at the biotech firm Almac, have resided in Lansdale.
A Zoom celebration-of-life-gathering will be held May 20 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. For further information, email his daughter Alexa Fong Drubay at alexafd@gmail.com.
In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Fong is survived by another daughter, Juliette Fong of Basel, Switzerland; a stepdaughter, Cheryl Devlin of Lansdale; three brothers, Buddy Fong of Memphis, Tennessee, Johnny Fong of Marianna, Arkansas, and Jerry Fong of North Miami, Florida; a sister, Lillie Woo of Kansas City, Missouri; three grandchildren; and a step-grandson.
A marriage to Maya Barbara Kraehenmann ended in divorce. A second marriage in 1971 to Judith Melvin ended with her death in 1978.
