IT MIGHT SURPRISE newcomers to learn that hairdresser Bootsie Ballard Gravatt visited a local funeral home recently to cut and set the hair of a longtime customer before the woman's viewing and burial.

But not the crowd at Bootsie's Beauty Boutique in Fredericksburg, where the shop owner with an apt, larger-than-life first name has made friends, not just customers, for 27 years.

This jovial supervisor of shampoos, sets, pin curls and busloads of French braids has spent nearly 50 years in that shop and others in Fredericksburg helping clients look their best.

"Over the years, my customers have become my friends, like family," said Gravatt. "When one of them passes away, there's one last thing I can do for them that no one else can--their hair and makeup."

In typical fashion, Gravatt chuckled and added a little more to the story of the deceased customer's hairdo: "I tried to set her hair as it was, and realized it was too long to go up right. So I cut it and set it the way she would have wanted, the way she liked it."

Gravatt, 67, says the increasing number of funeral-home visits is understandable given that she's been a hairdresser for nearly a half-century.

This Friday, she'll shut the doors of Bootsie's Beauty Boutique, where generations of Fredericksburg ladies have had their hair washed, dyed, teased and even flipped to look good at holiday soirees, Big Band dances or simply Saturday-night suppers.

"You make sure you say what we shared in here was 'news,' because you shouldn't call it gossip," said Gravatt, who worked in other shops and then an earlier one of her own before buying the boutique on Kenmore Avenue. "You could always come in here and find out what's going on in people's lives, news about their families. We've all gone through life together."

In an age when some men and women never go to the same barber or beauty shop twice, the notion of having someone care for your hair for life is a passing thing.

Gravatt says that's a shame.