June 3, 2001, Page E1 Edition: Section: Local
Heather McRea Times Staff Writer

Spa Owner Hopes To Put A New Face On The Region

Catherine E. Hinds, a Watertown native, won't be idling away her retirement. After a successful career as an entrepreneur, she opened a skin care and spa in Clayton.

She's an entrepreneur, a manufacturer and an educator. And now, Catherine E. Hinds has returned to her native north country to retire the only way she knows how — by starting a business. She opened Catherine Hinds American Skin Care & Spa on May 26 at 342 Riverside Drive across the street from the Clayton Inn and next to the village docks.

In six rooms, four with views of the St. Lawrence River, clients are offered facial treatments, body waxing, massages, spa pedicures and lash tinting. Other services include seaweed or herb body wraps, body polishing and facial microdermabrasion, where dead skin is removed by machine. "There is a huge pampering component to it, but it really has a huge footprint in science," Ms. Hinds said. "People begin to come more often because they find it makes them feel better."

Estheticians trained in skin care therapy assess problems, such as acne or sun damage, and teach clients how to better care for their skin, Ms. Hinds said.

For more than 30 years, she has sought to make the faces of the world healthier and a little younger-looking as an esthetician.

The 67-year-old with short, silvery-gray hair and few wrinkles on her face was born in Watertown and grew up in Sandy Creek. After graduating from Watertown High School in 1952 she went to Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, where she studied religion and philosophy.

She graduated during the Eisenhower years, she said, and succumbed to the assumption that she would "be an asset to a man." It was only after she divorced eight years later that luck placed her on the path toward her current success.

While living in Boston she walked into the Jordan Marsh Department Store just as the manager of the cosmetics department quit and walked out the door. She took the store's retail course and got hooked on the beauty business.

Several months later she found out the department store needed her only through the Christmas season. When she was let go, she used a $10,000 inheritance from her ex-husband's grandfather to start her first salon in Boston.

After perfecting the salon business she lobbied to establish a license in Massachusetts for estheticians separate from cosmetology. In 1979, she opened the Catherine Hinds Institute of Esthetics, the first accredited school for the discipline. That same year she founded Catherine Hinds Manufacturing to make the skin creams and lotions used in her treatments.

Last week she completed the sale of her school and company to her daughter so she could retire and return to the river she loves.

During all the years she lived in Boston she returned for summer vacations along the St. Lawrence River, finally buying from her family the Grenell Island cottage her grandparents had purchased in 1906. Her grandfather was Joseph A. Hinds, owner of the Victoria movie theater that once stood next to the Crystal Restaurant on Public Square in Watertown, and Watertown's Bijou theater on State Street.

Last August, while in Clayton on vacation, she was returning from a trip to the movies with her grandson when she drove by the building she would later buy for $180,000. When she saw the small "for sale" sign on the building she decided to retire to Clayton and start a spa there.

"I was tired of the school," she said, though she is keeping a journal on the start-up of her spa that will be used for an entrepreneurship class.

But the one thing she has never tired of is caring for skin, and especially the face.

"It is like a crystal ball," she said. "An old face has stories to tell."

But the baby boomers making their way into their golden years don't seem to want to tell those tales.

"They are freaked out by the fact they are suddenly not looking the same in the mirror," she said. "People are not aging the same way they did."

She's optimistic that the women of Clayton and the rest of the north country plan to age gracefully.

"I believe we will be able to build a clientele locally," she said, adding that the coupons she's blanketing the region with should help.

At the end of the summer she will decide if if there are enough customers to keep the spa open during the winter, and if not, it will be a summer-only business. But she is aiming for a year-round enterprise. And if the Clayton spa proves successful, Watertown may be next.