O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore shall we dine for lunch, Romeo? In this case, Romeo is not a name but an acronym. It stands for Retired Old Men Eating Out. Vienna has a thriving ROMEO chapter that started less than a year ago. Bill Griffiths and Charlie Romano are members of that group.
“There is no national organization. Nobody has to give you permission to start a local chapter. And someone else can start one right here tomorrow,” said Griffiths. “It’s just a group of guys that decide they’d like to start getting together, and that’s what they do.”
One chapter in Connecticut has endeavored to write a history of the ROMEOs and offer tips that have worked for them and for other chapters. They have found the group’s history difficult to obtain. What they have been able to suss out is that ROMEO groups have been around in the U.S. for decades. The details, and even the exact number of chapters, are harder to decipher…