Mystery boy getting haircut became a truck driver in Ohio

Fortkamp was pictured as an unidentified 2-year-old at the barbershop on Tuesday in Orleans Hub.

Provided photo – Gene Fortkamp

ALBION – When he was a young boy, Gene Fortkamp and his family would travel from Ohio to visit family in Albion. On one of those trips, Gene got a haircut.

Orleans Hub on Tuesday included two photographs of a 2-year-old boy getting his hair trimmed by Albion barber Michael Christopher. It was dated June 1958. The photos were included in our Vintage Orleans feature by Bill Lattin, the county historian. The boy was unidentified. We asked readers for help in naming the kid in the barber’s chair.

Loraine Dibley sent us an email not long after the article was posted about “Getting Clipped.” She thought the boy was her cousin, Eugene Fortkamp. She called up Gene’s sister and had her take a look.

Betsy Eischen confirmed that the boy is her brother. She said the family was visiting their grandfather, Joseph Dibley, during that summer when Gene got a haircut on his 2nd birthday.

She said her brother, a truck driver, has grown up to look a lot like their grandfather. The family continues to have reunions in the Albion area.

Gene and Betsy’s mother, Marion Dibley, is from Albion. She went to the University of Dayton and became a teacher in Ohio. That’s where she met her husband, Ed Fortkamp. Marion is soon to celebrate her 94th birthday.