Former mayor of Irvington dies at 81

Chandler Homer Luckham was a full-time barber and taught himself to repair watches and clocks.

Chandler Homer Luckham presided as Irvington's mayor from 1968 to 1974, a time when the Town Council named the streets and passed a comprehensive zoning ordinance to control the town's growth.

Mr. Luckham, an 81-year-old retired barber and watchmaker, died Thursday at his Irvington home of complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

A native of Richmond, he grew up in Irvington. After graduating from White Stone High School, he was in the Air Force for 6½ years, serving in the Philippines.

When he finished his military service, Mr. Luckham, who had married, decided to go to barber school in Richmond. Renting quarters from an uncle in Highland Springs, "He and his [first] wife lived in a one-room apartment that had no indoor plumbing. They lived very frugally for a year," said his wife of 11 years, Margaret Ann Pierce Saunders Luckham.

The Luckhams settled in Irvington after he finished school. Mr. Luckham worked for his father doing house painting for 10 years during the day and worked as a barber at night in a tiny building that had once housed an Irvington bank.

About 1964, he bought a building in town, converted part of it into a barbershop and part into a rental property and began barbering full time.

He took a correspondence course and taught himself to repair watches and clocks. "He was the only one in the area who could fix grandfather clocks," his wife said. "He worked six days a week, taking Tuesdays off," she said. "He did his watch work at night, when he wasn't working on someone's hair."

He retired in 2004.

Mr. Luckham served on various committees at Irvington United Methodist Church, where he was a member, and was a former president of the Lancaster Lions Club.

In the mid-1990s, the Lancaster Union Masonic Lodge 88, Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons, gave him a Community Builder Award for his service to the community.

He was the widower of Joyce Brown Luckham, who died in 1982, and Catherine Beard Dawley Luckham, who died in 1995.

In addition to his wife, survivors include a daughter, Constance L. Crittenden of Mathews; two sons, Garry J. Luckham of Irvington and Maurice C. Luckham of White Stone; two stepsons, Thomas Saunders of Kilmarnock and Stanley Saunders of White Stone; three stepdaughters, Ann Saunders McCarty of Lompoc, Calif., Eileen Convoy of White Stone and Kathy Dawley of Texas; and two granddaughters, three great-granddaughters, 14 stepgrandchildren and a number of stepgreat-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held today, Tuesday, at 2 p.m. at Irvington United Methodist Church.

Mr. Luckham, who always regretted that he didn't have much formal education, quipped, when he decided to donate his body to science, "I'm finally going to go to college," his wife said.