WOODWARD, Okla. (KFOR) — It’s a unique structure, a very small, one-room, octagonal building at the west end of Main Street that’s occupied this spot since just after the infamous 1947 Woodward Tornado.

“This part of town had been wiped out,” asks a visitor?

“Yes,” answers Sherry Luckie-Privette. “Everything on this end of town was gone.”

She remembers, years later, driving by it as a kid.

“I knew it was something,” she smiles. “I would always tell my mom that was the coolest building and I want to go in there one of these days, and I want to work there.”

It’s been lots of things over the years; the Wagon Wheel drive-up diner, a bait shop, an oil field business and a barbershop since 1981.

“When the previous owner decided to retire, he asked me if I wanted to buy it, and here I am.”

But the original design, windows all the way around as if to keep watch from all directions, recalls the guard towers that used to keep in prisoners of war on American soil.

“It was 10 to 18 feet in the air, on stilts,” describes Sherry.

The POW camp at Alva, Okla., only operated for a couple of years until the end of World War II.

An enterprising family in Woodward bought three of these guard shacks and brought them to town.

She wonders, “What kinds of stories these walls could tell.”

Over the years a lot of people forgot about the original history of the structure which is partly why Sherrie put a binder together when she bought the place last year.

“I thought I should go ahead and tell everybody about it and carry on the history of it,” she tells us.

Not much has changed.

The sharpshooters are gone, and the hot plate from the restaurant.

But Sherrie is standing a post on her shop’s unique history.

She’s also changing the name to reflect it.

Her shop is officially The Guard Shack once again.

“It speaks for itself,” she smiles.

The Facebook address for the shop still reflects the old name.

You can find The Barber Shop of Facebook here.