Nancy Sim was working at a men’s hairstyling salon in Salt Lake City when a customer who was impressed with her skills urged her to set up business in Park City.
The customer was Park City business and community leader Bob Wells. Sim, who had five years of barbering experience at the time, was ready to do something on her own.
On Dec. 9, 1975, she opened Silver Shears Styling Salon in the Marsac building at Park City Mountain. The salon eventually moved to a Holiday Inn, which later became The Yarrow, and then to its current location at 1901 Prospector Ave., in Prospector Square.
Now, after nearly a half century of cutting and styling hair in Park City, Sim is retiring at the end of the year. During those 47 years, she has become close to her devoted clientele.
“The majority of my clients have crossed the line between customer and friend,” she said.
Nail technician Carly Bennett Stenmark, who has worked at Silver Shears since 2002, also is retiring at the end of the year. She has been giving manicures and pedicures in Park City since 1982 and in Salt Lake City for two years before that.
Bennett Stenmark said Sim – a self-described chocoholic – is the best.
“She’s funny,” she said. “She has a very dry sense of humor and she tells great jokes and she always has chocolate. She’s just a great lady.”
Sim studied barbering and styling at Salt Lake Community College after graduating from high school. She considers herself to be primarily a barber and most of her customers are men but she also cuts and styles women’s hair.
Carol Sletta said Sim used to go to an assisted living center, which had a little salon, to fix her late mother’s hair.
“My mom had the best-looking hair of anybody out there, by far,” Sletta said. “She always looked like a million bucks.”
Sim said that in the 1970s, men stopped getting short haircuts and began growing their hair long and over their ears. A lot of them also stopped going to barber shops, she said, but that trend has reversed.
“They would go to beauty salons after hours because they didn’t want to go in there when the girls were in there because they knew barbers just did short haircuts,” Sim said. “Now, it’s kind of gone full circle and there’s a resurgence of barbering and we’re doing the real tight and high haircuts again.”
No matter what style of haircut they get, Sim’s customers appreciate her work.
“I’m 85 and I’ve never had a barber close to as good as Nancy,” Glenn Potter, who calls Sim a good friend, said.
Another customer, Tom Engelman, joked Sim has only one limitation.
“She has not been able to do anything to fill in my bald spot,” he said.
Engelman has been getting his hair cut at Silver Shears since he moved to Park City five years ago and has become part of the network of client-friends. During his visits to the salon, he often can catch up on news about other people in Sim’s circle, he said.
Some of those friends have been coming to the salon for years, Engelman said.
“They have monthly appointments,” he said. “It’s part of the Park City life and lifestyle. With her being gone, they’re all going to have bad hair days.”
Longtime customer Ken Martz said every time he goes to Silver Shears, he runs into someone he knows. Sim is always pleasant, he added.
“She has the same disposition, always friendly, and never a dull moment,” Martz said.
Like Sim, many of Bennett Stenmark’s clients have become her friends. Two of them are husband and wife Jim and Cindy Gastonguay.
Cindy Gastonguay began coming to Bennett Stenmark years ago after a skiing accident.
“It started because I shattered my knee and with a brace on, I couldn’t reach my feet,” she said.
She gets manicures and pedicures and her husband, Jim, gets pedicures. They moved from Park City to Heber five years ago but remain loyal customers.
“We still keep coming back to Carly,” Cindy Gastonguay said.
Bennett Stenmark learned the art of doing nails through on-the-job training.
When she got too busy at her job helping manage a restaurant to keep up with her regular manicure appointments, she began filling and repairing her acrylic nails herself. When Bennett Stenmark finally found time for an appointment, the manicurist was so impressed by her nails that she asked her if she wanted a job.
Bennett Stenmark switched to an early shift at the restaurant and spent the afternoons watching the manicurist at work. She eventually quit her restaurant job and worked for a number of nail salons before opening her own salon.
“I sold that in 1999 and then I bounced around in a couple of places trying to find a good fit,” she said. “Then somebody suggested I talk to Nancy.”
There was an empty room at Silver Shears, where Bennett Stenmark set up shop. She began working there right after the 2002 Winter Olympics held in Utah ended.
Bennett Stenmark is the author of “More Than a Manicure: The Nail Files,” a memoir published in 2017 that includes stories from her clients and accounts of her struggles, including the challenge of being a divorced mother of four when she first began doing nails at age 28. She is halfway through a second “More Than a Manicure” book.
She also is working on a book that is coming out in January about how Alzheimer’s has affected her husband, Ken Stenmark, who was diagnosed with the disease several years ago and is in a memory care facility. Bennett Stenmark’s retirement plans include promoting the book — titled “No time like the present: My husband’s rapid descent into the unknown world of Alzheimer’s disease” — and working with the Alzheimer’s Foundation.