I shaved off the beard a year later because I was applying for a job at the Mutual Broadcasting System and the network had a no-beards policy. I got the job, but when I started work in June 1977 I found the newsroom was full of bearded men. The news director explained that while Mutual News did indeed have a no-beards policy, it was illegal, so they didn’t enforce it. So I grew my beard back and it has been there ever since. Because I also married in June 1977, however, my wedding pictures showed me sans beard.

During the 1980s and 90s, when I rose through the ranks to become a manager at Mutual, then became a newscaster at UPI Radio and rose through the ranks to become a manager again, the beard helped me look like an adult. I was a reasonably good manager but only because being the eldest of six kids gives you certain instincts for looking out for others; I did not particularly enjoy management and never really looked the part even when I had a closetful of suits. But the beard helped, even before it began showing gray.

I have never trimmed my beard at the edges. It stops where it stops. When you get up when I get up, not having to shave is important to well-being.  I also do not blow-dry my hair, but wash it and brush it straight back. It dries the way you see it.

Why do you think people trim beards where they do, and not along other lines? Because some men have beards that look that way naturally, that’s why. This has not prevented everyone who has ever done my hair from proposing to trim it, invariably convinced that once I see it trimmed I will like it so much that I will purchase an edger and devote a couple minutes every morning to prettifying my face.

Nope.

Once when I was at Pacific Business News and broadcasting on Brand X, a viewer left me a voicemail calling on me to lose the beard “so I can see your dimples. I know you have dimples.” Actually, the last time I looked, I only had faint dimples that could be seen only in the broadest and most intense of grins, and then mainly on just one side.

As my beard grew grayer, while my hair stayed mostly brown, I briefly considered losing the beard. My daughter Leina’ala vetoed the idea.

“I wouldn’t recognize you,” she said.

Don’t work hard to change the way you look. It’s easier to simply look the way you look and hang out with people who can stand it. Anyone who likes your looks only after you have tinkered with them for a long time is likely to be disappointed in the end.