John Capps was a performer who made people laugh

Who’s that old bald guy with the Rotary logo tattooed on top of his head?

“I’m John T. Capps III from Morehead City, N.C.,” he would introduce himself…elongating the “or” sound for effect. Get it?

In 1974, Capps literally put Morehead City on the world map when he established an organization named the Bald-Headed Men of America (BHMA). It was billed as a baldness “support group,” operating out of the Capps Printing office, which was cleverly located on Bald Drive in Morehead City. The motto was “more head, less hair.”

Capps was born into a family of male baldies, and he started losing his hair as a teenager. By college, he had a good chrome dome going.

As a young man, Capps interviewed for a job with a large financial institution in Atlanta. The recruiter told him to come back when he grew some hair. He didn’t “fit their image for management trainees.”

“On the way home, I thought about it,” Capps said, “and said ‘you know, it’s more important what’s in the head than what’s on top of it.” The idea came to him that bald-headed men should “be proud of every hair we don’t have. Let’s make headway in life. Skin is in!”

Capps’ presses started cranking out promotional materials to support the message: “The Lord is just, the Lord is fair, He gave some brains and the others hair.”

 

Capps’ marketing campaign targeted bald and balding men who he had met through his business, Rotary, church and chamber of commerce contacts. A masterful networker, he collected business cards. On the back side of cards received from men with no or little hair, Capps wrote “BALD.” These fellows became his “bald database” – candidates for membership in BHMA.

The organization began holding weekend conventions in Morehead City each September. Members would flock into town to enjoy the camaraderie and to build their self-esteem. These gatherings attracted national news media attention.

 

Journalist Richard “Baldman” Sandomir (shown below), author of “Bald Like Me: The Hair-Raising Adventures of Baldman,” attended the 1989 convention…and fit right in.

 

“C’mon, bring your bald head over here,” roars John T. Capps III as I enter the Holiday Inn. With six other baldies, I face the lobby’s wall-size mirror as we pose for a Philadelphia TV station. Between our heads and the lights, there’s plenty of glare.”

“Capps exhorts us to rub our domes in unison and chant: ‘Hip-hip! Bald is beautiful! Bald is beautiful! Bald is beautiful!’”

“My friend Steve shies away from the action,” Sandomir said. “He’s not sure he wants to be here and pleads that his bald spot is too small to fit in, a claim that is demonstrably false. In his distinctive drawl, Capps bellows, ‘By Sunday, he’ll be as bald as the rest of us.’”

Welcome to “the John Capps Show: part evangelical revival, part cornball comedy act, part power-of-positive-thinking seminar.”

Capps developed productive relationships with network television personalities at NBC’s “Today” show – Willard Scott, Joe Garagiola and Harry Smith, all members of the baldies fraternity.

 

Reporter Gersh Kuntzman covered the 2000 convention for the New York Post.

After the presentation of the “Ben Franklin Lookalike Award,” Kuntzman said the attendees and their guests “were on their feet, singing a slightly altered version of the hymnal ‘Let It Shine.’”

 

“This li’l head of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” as the fluorescent light bounced off their “dynamic domes.”

But what about the tattoo? “You mean this?” Capps asked, while peeling a round Rotary decal off his head.