Germantown: A Divine Education About Beauty

One of the most eye-catching buildings in Germantown is, without a doubt, a bright purple, Barbie-doll-decorated, mural-covered building at the intersection of Armat Street and Germantown Avenue.

Building number 5524 is the home of the Divine Beauty School of Esther, a cosmetology school established in order to better educate, enable and empower the women of Germantown who have struggled to achieve a better lifestyle for themselves and their families.

Germantown is notorious for its high drop out rate among high school students and therefore many young men and women struggle to overcome and succeed in their life choices, making obtaining a higher social economic status or career advancement more difficult than in more economically stable neighborhoods.

The Philadelphia School District website provides data collected over the years ranging from 2006 to 2009 of Germantown High School’s demographics and other additional characteristics.

For this time period, the public school showed more withdrawals than enrollment each school year, and offered provided information showing statistical findings representing 30 percent of students attending the high school having learning disabilities and 83 percent being from economically disadvantaged households.

Darice “Mrs. D” Bryce-Fleming, the  founder and owner of the Divine Beauty School, left her life as a sergeant in the United States Army software and systems engineering department to open the educational institution in the heart of the struggling neighborhood.

Pleasant, charming and full of ideas and energy, Bryce-Fleming is a former graduate of Germantown High School herself, and felt a calling one morning during prayer:

“I heard the Lord’s voice say inside of me, ‘Darice, I want you to open a beauty school and mentor women who are in transition from addiction, jail, welfare and who are in need of guidance.’ And I cried—I cried a deep cry.”

It took Bryce-Fleming two years to get serious about the task the voice had called upon her to execute. Upon setting her plans into motion Bryce-Fleming incorporated the help of other experts in the field of cosmetology. She first met Francis Holcomb-Atkins, who is now the instructor for practical cosmetology.

After finding Holcomb-Atkins, Bryce-Fleming was able to come across business savvy and educational instructor Joyce Anderson. Anderson is the supervisor and overseer of all that goes on within the institution, as well as instructs any student who wishes to attend the beauty school in order to become instructors in cosmetology themselves.

A tall, impressive woman with an acute sense of style, Anderson is a wonderful representative of the successful and accomplished female.

“We aim to prepare the young women of the Divine Beauty School of Esther and provide a sense of hope and worth. We establish a basis for them to become educated and instill in them the tools and necessities in which it takes to succeed.”

It wasn’t until the construction phase of the Divine Beauty School that Bryce-Fleming met her husband, Gary Fleming, an electrician working on the building, which was to become the Divine Beauty School of Esther and a man equally as motivational and full of life as Darice herself.

An electrician since 1982, Felming also holds classes within the beauty school that offer to the community the chance to learn and experience basic electrician skills as an introduction into the profession. He established the introductory course, “Let There Be Light Electric,” in order to incorporate some opportunity for the males of the neighborhood who may be stuck or caught in a situation that calls for a career initiation or adjustment.

“Let There Be Light Electric is meant to encourage those members of the community who may not have been academically inclined and were never exposed to the option of being mechanically capable. They don’t teach shop and other forms of trades in schools anymore, and this just discourages those who are unable to compete in the academic world. Anyone can come to the class, and they can may continue or stop at anytime they wish.”

After the school was officially opened, Meldora Miles, owner of the East Washington Lane beauty parlor El Salon, began to hear from her staff and previous students of the beauty school about the institution and what it was doing for the women and the community as a whole and immediately became interested in teaching at the cosmetology center.

When Bryce-Fleming was presented with the 57 years of experience with cosmetology practice, instruction and chemical expertise that Miles had incorporated during her lifetime she held no hesitation in hiring Miles to become the institution’s chief instructor of theory.

“I have traveled the globe—the United States, Germany, Paris, Norway and other areas of the world to learn, teach and develop products in the chemical field, such as the hair cream PCJ by Luster.”

PCJ (Pressing Comb in a Jar) is a chemical relaxer for hair in which Miles was a member of the chemical specialist team that developed the product.

Student Francis Harrison is currently studying throughout the summer session under Anderson in order to complete the requirements to become an instructor in cosmetology herself.

“I really like the way they treat you here. They take their time with you, make sure you understand and are prepared and treat everyone who come in with respect and friendliness.”

Not only does the Divine Beauty School offer its educational services to the community, but it also gives back in ways that make an impression on the community as a whole.

Each year the students at the beauty school provide their services for free to the students of the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, located in Germantown, for special events such as prom and graduation.

The school also holds in-house competitions in which the neighborhood is encouraged to attend and judge the students based on most creative, most daring and other categories of hair, skin and nail performance, as well as observe fashion shows put on by students, alumni and others.

Although the institution has been comfortably operating as a cash-based school while offering payment plans and in-house financial services, the school has been extended an opportunity by the state to become an accredited institution for awarding federal and state funded loans as well as financial aid.

The Divine Beauty School of Esther requires only an eighth-grade education from the students enrolling, creating a new opportunity to those who would otherwise have no options in employment or educational advancement.

The students complete nine months of theory and practical training and are tested consistently before they are sent to a Pennsylvania-approved site in which to test for and receive a Pennsylvania Cosmetology License.

The Divine Beauty School of Esther is currently in the process of obtaining the rights to operate as one of those license-testing facilities.