ROMEOs

BY MANDY HAYNES • PHOTO BY SHERRY CARTER

So, a retired New York Times journalist, a civil engineer, and a minister walk into a diner. If this sounds like the set-up for a joke, it’s not; in fact, it’s serious business.

Bob Weintraub, Bob Keane, and Harry Green get together with a dozen or so other ROMEOs (Retired Old Men Eating Out) once a week for coffee, breakfast, and conversation. Or as David Jonker put it, “We’re having coffee and telling lies.” So maybe it’s not too serious, but the Friday morning meetings for these guys are a long-standing tradition.

Sam Lane, Steve Mobbs, Scott Kessler, Bob Keane, Robert Prager, and Michael Tanner are the original members, the “old timers” of the group, who started meeting five years ago. “Steve Mobbs got the idea for the name when he read a stranger’s obituary. It mentioned the guy’s friends—the Romeos—who met once a week at different restaurants. It fit our group, so it became the name we used. Little did we know that there are ROMEOs all over the world! We’d been meeting for a couple of years when we found out,” laughs Steven Crounse.

I did some research and found that Tom Brokow mentions ROMEO clubs in his book The Greatest Generation, which was published in 1998. Apparently, these groups have been around for decades, started by men in retirement who realized they missed the camaraderie they had with their coworkers.

I learned about the Amelia Island ROMEOs three years ago when I met David Jonker. He’s a great storyteller, who knew I’d love meeting this diverse group of fellas as fodder for my own stories. In fact, his exact words were, “If you want to meet some characters, I know where to find them.”

Back then I was working at Story and Song Bookstore, so my schedule kept me from going, and then Covid showed up and made getting together a lot more difficult. Now that things are settling down, I contacted David to see if the invitation to meet the group was still open. When he said yes, I anxiously waited for Friday morning to come. Let me tell you, it was worth the wait.

When I met with the ROMEOs, there were eleven of them seated outside at a table at the Beach Diner. Before I could ask if they went to different restaurants, Tiffany Hurley appeared to fill my coffee mug, a cobalt blue beauty with THE ROMEOS embossed on it. (It was a surprise gift from Crounse, the Big Kahuna himself.) Soon, my unasked question was answered.

“We love her,” said one of the Romeos, “Tiffany was our favorite waitress at Doo Wop Diner, but she took a job here. We waited for about a month after she left before coming by to see her, and we haven’t left since.”

“These guys are my comfort zone!” laughs Tiffany. “They are the best group of people you’d ever want to meet. So many stories!” She’s not exaggerating, either. When you add up the years of experience, the interesting backgrounds, and the wisdom of the group, they are a gold mine.

You’d think that months of isolation would’ve put a damper on these guys, but that wasn’t the case. While they waited on vaccinations and boosters to become available, they found a way to stay connected and keep the conversations going. “Oh, we still met,” answered Ken Kneisel. “We Zoomed on Friday mornings and got Tiffany to join us.”

Who are these ROMEOs? They are environmentalists, entrepreneurs, liberals, conservatives, storytellers, and friends. They are locals, full-time residents, and one “snow-bird.” But if you really want to know who they are, Tiffany says it best. “We set up a virtual tip jar during the shutdown, and they would ‘tip’ me at our Friday morning Zooms. After a couple of weeks, I told them I was fine and they didn’t have to keep tipping me, but they said if I didn’t need it, use it to help someone else.”

That’s who the ROMEOs are.