LeRoy Terry, legendary Layton barber cut hair for 70 years

                                     LeRoy Terry, hair-cutting legend.

LeRoy Terry remembers cutting the hair of a 91-year-old Civil War veteran in 1938 while working in Moab. Terry was still a 40-hour-a-week barber in the year 2000, cutting hair in an obscure Layton shop.

At 86, was the oldest active businessman in Layton in the year 2000, having worked there 45 years. "I don't know when I'm going to quit," he said. "I don't plan on it. . . . My health has been good, . . . just a little arthritis."

His state barber license is good until September 2001, and he's considering renewing it.

"I like the association with all the guys," Terry said.

"I let the guys do the talking," he said. "I always avoid arguments."

He gives 10 to 25 haircuts a day now. Using just 15 cuts a day as an average for five days a week, 48 weeks a year, for 64 years, Terry has given at least 230,400 haircuts.

The oldest of eight boys growing up in Alpine, Terry cut the hair of all his brothers in the 1920s and helped care for a 95-acre farm and milk 20 cows twice a day.

Terry also used to cut his grandfather's and father's hair. Add his brothers, sons, grandsons and great-grandsons and he's cut six generations of hair in his family.

His first professional hair cutting came along in 1936 when he worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps for several years in Zion and Bryce national parks. He also doubled as the camp's first aid man as the crew spent winter in Zion and summers in Bryce making trails and roads.

"I got good at cutting hair," he said.

In 1938, Terry went to the Molen Barber College in Salt Lake City. Later that year he moved to Moab and earned his master barber license by working for two years there.

When his boss' son got a barber license, Terry was out of a job. He moved to Hurricane to barber there, but that job only lasted a year because of World War II.

"People boarded up their homes and came to Hill Field," he said. "There wasn't enough men left to keep cutting hair there."

                           

                                  LeRoy Terry

Terry came to Salt Lake for a while and soon learned of a barber job open at Hill. He spent four years cutting hair at the base.

"I used to do the hair of the first commander at Hill," he said, explaining that short military haircuts and the prohibition against sideburns there gave him lots of business.

Terry moved to Layton in 1944 and the next year started barbering with Henry Smedley, who owned Smedley's Barber Shop. He spent 11 years there, and then Smedley sold the business to him.

He worked 23 years on Layton's south Main Street in several locations before moving to 26 North Main in a shop behind the Ensign Building.

 His shop was located just west of I-15 and just north of Gentile Street, but you had to enter the parking lot on the west side of J & J Engraving and Trophies, 55 E. Gentile, to find his small shop at the west end.

He's never advertised and his barber shop always lacked a telephone. Cutting the hair for some four and five generations of Layton families has provided him with plenty of business.

                                    LeRoy Terry arrives at work on a typical day.

                                 LeRoy and his wife.

(-Written by Lynn Arave and originally published in the Deseret News of April 3, 2000.)

-All photographs are from the Heritage Museum of Layton collection. --

NOTE: Mr. Terry cut hair for another 6 years after this story was written, to conclude a 70-year hair-cutting career. He passed away in Layton on Oct. 7, 2006, at age 92.