James Edward Rann

James Edward Rann was an American hairdresser, painter, and AIDS activist best known as the owner of Waves, a hair salon in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he worked and lived for most of his adult life. He was born on June 2, 1943, in Lansing, Michigan, to Robert and Marian Rann, and he got his start in the hair business running a salon in East Lansing before relocating to Cape Cod, drawn, friends said, by his love of the town and its community.

In Provincetown, Rann eventually opened Waves Salon beside the Johnson Street parking lot and ran it for decades, retiring in 2015. Over that time he became a familiar and well liked figure in the small seaside town, remembered by those who knew him as someone who, in the words of one friend, was never heard to say anything unkind about another person because, as he put it, you do not know what someone else may have been through.

Alongside his work as a stylist, Rann was deeply involved in the response to the AIDS crisis that struck Provincetown's gay community especially hard from the 1980s onward. Friends recalled that he was passionate about AIDS related causes and marched twice in Washington, D.C. in support of people living with the disease. He was also remembered for using his artistic talents, including painting, to help AIDS patients find ways to express themselves, and for his involvement with films made about the epidemic and its toll on the Provincetown community. He continued to paint and exhibit his work for years until macular degeneration eventually made it impossible for him to continue.

James Edward Rann died on October 31, 2026, at Seashore Point, a senior living and care community in Provincetown, at the age of 83. His death was reported in an obituary published by the Provincetown Independent, which described him as an AIDS activist, hair stylist, and artist, and noted that he had been visited by friends in his final days. No cause of death has been made public.

Rann was predeceased by his parents and by his two sisters, Mary Lou Rann of Kilgore, Texas, and Carol Satterfield of Longmont, Colorado. A celebration of his life is planned in Provincetown, though full details of the date and venue had not been widely published at the time of his death. Tributes from friends and longtime members of the Provincetown community described him as a generous, nonjudgmental presence who had been part of the town's response to AIDS for decades, through both his activism and his quiet kindness toward anyone who came through his salon chair.