Hempfield High School teacher Terry Trego started noticing some white around his temples in high school. Now, at 31, he is completely gray.
Many people, including his students, often remark about his hair, the former blond said.
"They are surprised that someone who looks as young as me has gray hair," said Trego, who teaches 12th-graders government and economics and is the former executive director of the Lancaster County GOP Committee.
Pat Brogan, assistant to Lancaster, Pa., Mayor Rick Gray, never worried about her hair and let it grow out gray from her original black starting in her mid-20s. Today, the 52-year-old sports an all-white chic, close-cropped cut.
Cindy Hampton, 62-year-old Lancaster County senior planner, let her formerly brown hair grow into a lovely pewter color, since her late 40s. She just doesn't like sitting in a chair getting her hair colored, given the amount of time it takes.
Adrian Hennessy, manager at the Waterford Wedgwood outlet store at Rockvale Square Outlets in Lancaster, Pa., started finding grays in his black hair at 18 and never looked back.
"I get a lot of positive comments; people will be talking to me that I just met and they will say, 'Your hair really looks cool,'" Hennessy, 44, said.
All four countians are in good company.
Some famous manes have gone from shades ranging from salt and pepper to completely white. And guess what? It is totally cool.
The gorgeous Halle Berry is mostly shock white with a few black strands in her performance as Storm in "X-Men: The Last Stand." CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper, 38, and the new American Idol star Taylor Hicks, 29, both sport silver locks. Then there are actors George Clooney, Richard Gere and singer Emmylou Harris.
"I didn't have any idea that America would embrace gray hair as much as they have," Hicks told reporters, according to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times.
"Gray is the new black," according to a recent headline in GQ magazine.
So what's going on? Are we in the middle of a youth-worship backlash?
Well, maybe -- at least for the baby boomers, or those born between 1945 and 1964.
"Look at this generation; we always wanted to be ourselves," said Diana Lewis Jewell, author of Going Gray, Looking Great! The Modern Woman's Guide to Unfading Glory (Simon & Schuster, 2004) in a recent interview with St. Petersburg Times Seniority online.
Indeed, comedian Bill Cosby once said: "Gray hair is God's graffiti." But some seem to be looking at gray hair as simply another option of coiffure.
Lancaster hair salon owner Frank Fico said more and more of his clients, who are mostly women, are letting their hair grow out gray, largely because it is more convenient for them not to worry about taking time to dye their strands.
"They are learning they have something beautiful underneath their color and they are willing to let that shine through,'' said Fico ... "They see they have a positive attribute and they are not covering it up."
Hampton agreed with Fico that it is simply easier for her to have gray hair than to have it covered with color.
She does get compliments about her hair, she said, but people still like to give their advice.
"I have had people who would say, You would look so much nicer if you colored your hair,'" Hampton said.
"It's easier not to."
Furthermore, her stylist Kelly Wert, owner of Cheveaux salon in Lancaster, Pa., refuses to to color her hair.
Wert said she advises some women to color, but Hampton's hair is nice as it is and coloring could damage the great texture she has.
"She's beautiful; her hair is amazing,'' Wert said.
Next: More men than women going gray >
