Blind Barber Is Lucky She Had a Farsighted Teacher

Dawn Wiseman wants her customers to look good even though she never gets to see them. Wiseman is legally blind and has operated a barbershop for about two years in the western Kentucky town of Hickman. Fulfilling her dream of becoming a barber wasn’t always easy and Wiseman said that at one point she was tempted to quit barber school. That’s when her teacher, Howard Faughn, did a haircut blindfolded. “She said if I could do it, she could too,” he said. Wiseman finished the course and earned a state barber’s license. “When I found out she was coming into class, I went to an eye doctor and had him set his machine so I could see like she sees. I couldn’t see anything,” Faughn said. So he taught Wiseman to cut hair more by feel than by sight.

--The picture of an Arab hijacker waving a gun in front of John Testrake’s face as the pilot peered from the window of his cockpit in Beirut became a symbol of the horrors of terrorism. But the Trans World Airlines pilot says the event was staged by his captors. “It didn’t bother me then and it doesn’t bother me now,” he said. Testrake, 59, said he wrote a book, “Triumph Over Terror on Flight 847,” about the hijacking of the Boeing 727 shortly after it left Athens on June 14, 1985, because he wanted “to correct some of the misconceptions which are so prevalent in the United States regarding” the Middle East. The pilot from Richmond, Mo., calls his Shia Muslim captors “the bitter harvest of the Palestinian tragedy.” Testrake dedicated his book, released this month, to U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, 23, a passenger who was killed by the hijackers. Testrake has returned to flying for TWA and said he has no fears about airport security or being involved in another hijacking.

--Maybe some of Michael Wittkowski’s good luck will rub off on his customers. Just in case, Wittkowski, who won $40 million in Illinois’ largest lottery jackpot two years ago, had a state lottery terminal installed in the Chicago-area liquor store he opened with proceeds from his winnings. He sold the first ticket to his father. The second, he said, went to “a real sweet little old lady who plays all the time.” After winning the lottery, Wittkowski, 31, quit his job as a printer, got married, traveled and bought a house, two cars and some major appliances. But he said his winnings, which he is receiving in 20 annual installments, haven’t made him and his wife careless about money. “We’ve still got a lot of bills to pay,” he said. “We watch it. You’ve got to remember, the government gets half too.”