She was thumbing through the magazines in her father-in-law George Tomasic's Tar Heel Barber Shop.

"I said, 'George, you have Playboys in here!"

"He said, 'It's a barbershop.' "

The bell rang, and the next customer walked in.

"It was Dr. Friday," Jewett said and laughed. "I had the magazine closed, but it was still in my lap."

Friends and family of "George the barber" laughed amid tears this week as they recalled the local businessman who died Saturday afternoon at age 72.

Tomasic had colon cancer but kept working until two weeks ago.

"I saw him that Friday, the 16th," son Chris said, checking his father's appointment book Saturday morning. "He said he was done, he couldn't do it anymore."

Tomasic was raised in the North Braddock section of Pittsburgh. He spent four years in the Air Force, at one point deejaying for the Voice of America, before moving to Durham in 1957.

He went to barber school on Ninth Street and joined the Tar Heel Barber Shop in 1958 when it was in Amber Alley, first door on the left at the bottom of the stairs off East Franklin Street. The shop later moved to the back of the Bank of America building.

"I only had two people who ever cut my hair: my grandmother and him," said his stepson, Kim Jensen, who was just a year old when Tomasic married his mother, Fran. "I think he looked at those bad haircuts and figured he could do better."

"He loved his job. He was good at it."

Tomasic cut hair through five decades of fashion trends, from long hair to the '70s dry look to buzz cuts.

"I don't think he was ever into the mullets," Jensen said.

His clients included professors, college athletes and local celebrities.

Dean Smith, always pressed for time, used to park his car on Rosemary Street, motor running and headlights blinking, as he ran in for a quck trim.

In 2001, Tomasic, along with Franklin Street's flower ladies and Ed "Squeaky" Morgan, the hot dog man, was immortalized in a mural inside the Bank of America Center lobby.

"I was kind of surprised that they asked me if I wanted to be on it," Tomasic said as the murals went up.

But he seemed to appreciate his likeness on the wall.

"It probably made me look better than I did," he said. "I was walking through, and some girl I never saw before said, 'You're admiring yourself.'"

Tomasic was a regular at Sutton's, where best friend Jim Crisp figures the barber ate breakfast for 35 years.

"He wasn't the cheapest barber in town," Crisp said. "He'd charge most people $20, but he didn't care. And you had to have an appointment. You just couldn't walk in off the street."

And the Playboys?

"What we really enjoyed, besides all the beautiful women, were the jokes," Crisp said.

Tomasic collected quotes from wherever he found them.

On the blackboard beside his barber's chair: "A cynic is someone who has given up but won't shut up."

And Crisp laughed as he remembered how his friend would strut into Sutton's in a new suit from Julian's.

"He went out of his way to make sure everybody read the label. He wanted people to know he bought that suit from Alexander Julian."

But Tomasic was generous too.

He would leave $5 tips on $3 meals at Sutton's, Crisp said. "And there are some cheap people who eat there,' he said.

In the last few months, too weak to drive, Tomasic struck a deal with his friend.

After breakfast each morning, Crisp would drive him around the corner from Sutton's to his shop. In return, Tomasic would buy two copies of The News & Observer on their way out the door.

"I saw him every day," Crisp said. "I'm really gonna miss my papers."