Helen Tucci isn't one to disclose her age, yet put your arm around the petite manicurist's shoulders and you feel fragile bones. Chuck Nino isn't so shy about revealing his age because the barber looks decades younger than his 83 years.

Between the two co-workers, they have worked 77 years at the Stardust Barber Shop, which closes Nov. 1 along with the rest of the hotel to make way for the glitzy new Echelon Place. She's been there 33 years, he's been there 44, and when the hotel closes, they expect tears will flow as they say goodbye to the hotel and their jobs.

Like many others, Helen and Chuck landed in Las Vegas looking for new jobs and a new life, encouraged to come here by friends who said Las Vegas offered opportunities. Helen came to Las Vegas in 1961 from New York after her husband died, looking to start anew with her daughter. She worked at two other hotels before settling in at the Stardust in 1973.

"I'll be the last manicurist to be in the Stardust," Helen said with a mixture of pride and sorrow.

Chuck came here in 1962 from Wisconsin with his wife and children and worked days as a barber at the Stardust and nights as a musician at hotels up and down the Strip. He remembers the days when he'd play the drums and not get to bed until 5:30 a.m., open the Stardust barber shop at 9 a.m., work until 6 p.m. and be back at Cleopatra's Barge at Caesars Palace at 8:45 p.m. He worked hard; he and his wife raised six children here.

When Johnny Trujillo bought the barbershop in 1978, Helen and Chuck were part of the package, two steady workers who never gambled and raised good children with decent values. Helen and Chuck are only two of the many workers at the Stardust who made customers feel special. In the '70s, they saw some of their clients show up in the newspapers as mobsters. But in their memories, they were all just the nicest people. Helen and Chuck treated everyone with kindness, and they were treated kindly in return.

Though this barbershop will close, the team is sticking together. Johnny is moving his shop to the South Coast. Helen will go with him, and so will Robert Perry, who has worked there for five years and loves to hear the stories of yesteryear. Chuck might go for a while but actually is considering retiring.

Among the four of them, they have 110 years of memories at the Stardust. And as the final weeks wind down, sadness is creeping into their workday.

"Everybody is crying the blues about this place," Chuck said.

This was no unisex salon; this was an old-time barbershop. Men came in for manicures, haircuts and shaves without sharing their space with women customers. The guys who sat at their stations included old-time hotel bosses such as Benny Binion, Moe Dalitz, Frank Rosenthal, Allen Glick, Al Sachs, Herb Tobman, Sam Boyd and these days his son, Bill Boyd, the last owner of the Stardust. The dealers came in, and so did locals such as Sheriff John Moran.

Helen, Chuck and Johnny weren't about to tell tales out of school, but Johnny did admit that if Rosenthal didn't like you, he could be intimidating. Fortunately he liked Johnny, whose brother, Joey Trujillo, was his regular barber. Johnny remembered seeing Rosenthal one time after one of his televised shows at the Stardust. Rosenthal shook Johnny's hand and ignored Joey. When Rosenthal walked away, Joey explained, "He didn't like the way I did his hair today." Of course, Rosenthal didn't have much hair to work with.

Benny Binion came there for weekly haircuts and shaves for more than a decade and inevitably brought two bags of popcorn, one for Chuck and one for himself. Binion often said that if Chuck wore his shoe size, he would have shared some of the boots people always were giving him, but alas, the trim Chuck would have fallen out of the burly Binion's boots.

One day Binion called the shop and a new employee answered the phone. "This is Benny," he said.

"Benny who?" she asked.

Binion never came back.

Helen Tucci and Chuck Nino had spent years doing what they did best, making someone feel special. And it was all lost in an unwitting question perceived as an insult.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.