The Man Who Makes Faces

By Ron Laytner
Edit International
Copyright 2009

Robert Barron is the world’s greatest disguise master. He worked for the CIA for dozens of years protecting, hiding and rescuing American spies and defectors in the Soviet Union and Communist China.

Mission Impossible movies show secret agents instantly changing identities by pulling a soft plastic mask over their head, complete with hair. But in real life turning a hunted spy or escaping political dissident takes more work. In the most challenging missions they called on Robert Barron.

Barron started out as an enlisted man in the US Army and because of his art talent was sent to a Pentagon magazine. The young artist, whose paintings were often mistaken for photographs, didn’t want to park at the back of the endless Pentagon parking lot.

He forged a perfect General rank auto pass and parked near the building. Found out, young Robert was fired from the magazine. But the US government never let’s a great talent go to waste. Men in black suits took him away to CIA Headquarters where he was recruited for his devious skills.

Barron spent years in special classes for identity switching, learning how to completely alter a person’s appearance by crafting imitation ears, noses, eyebrows, moustaches and wigs. Barron learned how to interchange the colors of skin on black, white and Oriental spies. He learned how to make silicone look exactly like living skin.

After a long, distinguished career, the details of which are still classified, Barron retired with a CIA medal and the ability to make the best facial disguises the world has ever seen. Still young, he wondered how he could harness his dark arts to help more than just spies.

He began to visit plastic surgeons who worked to fix the mistakes of nature, accidents and fires. He watched them cut away living tissue from the disfigured and graft on missing noses, ears and chins. And he realized, he said, what to him was a frightening truth - plastic surgeons did more harm than good. And he realized he could do a better job.

And so Baron invaded the turf of Plastic surgeons with the precision of a spymaster and quickly became known as “The Man Who Makes Faces”.

“In the CIA I gave people different identities to avoid being captured. What I do now is exactly the same except I don’t hide people any longer. Now I take people who are hidden and bring them into the light.

“My work is so realistic and I feel such compassion for my patients that I put every ounce of my artistic ability into making my changes look as life-like as possible.”

He will not allow patients to leave his office if their prosthesis doesn’t pass his close scrutiny. One man phoned to complain his barber had cut off the tiny hairs on the edge of his false ear.

“I told him to rejoice because even his barber couldn’t tell his ear was not real and that I’d make him a new one. That’s how good the work must be.”

One of his early triumphs was a complete face for Jim Alexander of Detroit who was trapped in a car fire that burned away his entire face. Jim survived dozens of operations and painful skin grafts, was blind from his injuries and lived as a hidden recluse, not wanting to hear children scream at his sight.

Barron fashioned a complete face. And after many operations Jim’s sight was restored. He remained Barron’s happiest achievement until, one day, five years later, Jim Alexander fell asleep smoking in bed and burned to death.

Since then Barron has also made ears and noses for Pentagon men and women burned in the September 11th attack on America. He has also worked free for survivors of the two World Trade Centers who lived but lost ears, faces and hands.

Among his strangest cases is an abused woman from Pakistan, victim of a Muslin ‘honor’ slaying that went wrong when she didn’t die.

Zahida Parveen, a beautiful 24-year-old woman was six months pregnant when she was attacked and tortured by her abusive and jealous barber husband after he thought she looked at another man over her veil.

He took her home, stripped her naked, tied her hands and feet, hung her upside down on a rope he had fastened earlier to a pipe in the ceiling, gouged out her eyes with a metal rod, then, using his barber’s straight razor, sliced off his wife’s nose and ears. He tried to grab her tongue but couldn’t catch hold of it. Then he cut her down so his blind wife could hear him take her children away..

The attack, one of about 1,000 mostly unpunished yearly honor killings in Pakistan, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, was so horrible public outrage caused her husband to be arrested. He was given 14 years in one of the world’s harshest prisons.

Though she survived what upset Zahida most was most upset by her little children screaming every time they saw her destroyed face.

Zahida was flown to Washington where she met plastic surgeons, Craig Dufresne, Michael Singer and ex spy Robert Barron.

She was worked on for six hours. The doctors made her acrylic glass eyes and Robert Barron replaced her nose and ears. She returned to Pakistan, blind, but content, with her children willing to hug her again.

In recent years Barron has found himself gravitating more and more to copying ears and noses. He is crusading against plastic surgeons whom he says prey on innocents.

Today, at his offices in Ashburn, Virginia near Washington, DC, Barron says, “Plastic surgeons are not your friends. No plastic surgeon on earth can copy body parts from human tissue and make it look natural..

“They operate on the patient, take cartilage from their body and try to fashion a perfect ear out of human tissue. It often looks like a cauliflower. They know the outcome is always going to fall short. To me, ear reconstructive surgery is criminal.

“Families pay as much as a quarter million dollars. They don’t realize there is an alternative, My price is usually less than $10,000.”

Robert Barron makes prosthetic ears that cannot be recognized as anything but natural and perfect. He starts off by making a mirror image of a person’s one good ear, reversing it and making a mold. Then he matches their skin color, adds in tiny hairs, and even makes a winter and a summer tanned ear so the patient looks normal in any season.

Barron says he saves patients a lot of painful depression.. “Restoring their faces brings faith and quality into their lives. My job is to fulfill their expectations. My heart goes out to parents who have made the wrong decision. They should be forewarned about the limits of plastic surgery.”

“I could be in Hollywood making millions. They begged me to come with my techniques but I refused. The money is not important. My purpose in life is helping others.

“After all my years in the CIA I have never heard again from the people whose lives I saved. But patients in my new life call me all the time. I know every one of them by their first names and they call me and send me Christmas cards thanking me for returning their lives.”

The End
By Ron Laytner
Edit International
Copyright 2009