“I guess that’s the way God blessed me, and I’ll just keep it that way. I tell my three daughters they are responsible for the gray, so I’ll just keep it,” she said.

Carl Wiseley, another diner at the center, said he got his gray hair when he was “pretty young — just about 65.”

“It’s just one of those things. It didn’t bother me,” he said. “I used to have wavy hair too, but taking all this medicine just straightened it out.”

Wiseley said he’s never considered using Grecian Formula 16 or the other male hair colorings he sees advertised on TV.

Virginia Henry, whose hair is a darker shade of gray, said she began seeing gray hair when she was in her 40s.

“I had surgery and my doctor started telling me I would turn gray because of the medications I used,” she said.

“It started turning around my face. I’d get a few gray hairs here and there. I still haven’t turned completely gray. The back of my hair is pretty dark.”

How did she feel when she saw those first gray hairs?

“I was kind of regretful,” she said. “But I’ve never done anything to it. I’ve never had any perms or anything. It’s just natural. I just let it turn.”

While the people quoted above are senior citizens, Chris Cisternino is in his 40s and began graying far earlier. He started noticing the gray when he was 16 years old. It didn’t come as a total surprise because his mother was prematurely gray.

He colored his hair once, when he went to Greece, because his sister-in-law teased him about it.

“She had said, ‘Gee, Chris, you sure are gray,’ and I said to her, ‘Gee, you sure look old.’ So I had it colored for that trip, and she commented that my hair was no longer gray, but I told her she still looked old,” he said.

He doesn’t remember when the gray actually took over, but he has plenty of curly white hair now.

“People always comment on it, which surprises me. I’ll hear them say, ‘Look at that beautiful curly white hair.’ I stand out in a crowd,” he said.

As a partner in the Smiles and Styles Salon at Wisdom Keepers apartments, Patricia Magner takes care of the hair of seniors living in the complex as well as customers from all over the Tahlequah area. Many of her clients prefer to color her hair – at least, the ladies do.