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2007-12-04 issue:

ROMEOs: Retired Old Men Eating Out

Harrisonburg, Va., group is second chapter after Indiana men’s gathering.

by Jim Bishop

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Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? For an answer to that age-old question, Juliet need look no farther than the IHOP restaurant in Harrisonburg, Va., on Monday evenings or the Daily Grind in Park View on Friday mornings. That’s where you’ll find the Harrisonburg chapter of the ROMEOs or “Retired Old Men Eating Out.”













Members of Harrisonburg, Va., ROMEOs meet in a local restaurant (left to right): Glendon Blosser, Harold Kuhns, Addison Brainard, Dwight Hartman, Millard Showalter and Harold Huber. Absent is H.D. Swartzendruber. Photo by Jim Bishop.

The seven members take advantage of IHOP’s 50 percent senior discount on Monday nights, but that’s not their main reason for gathering.

Each group member has lost the love of his life, through illness or accident, in recent years. They enjoy the food and fellowship, tell stories and laugh, but most importantly they give and receive support to help ease their lingering sense of loss.

In October 2005, Addison Brainard, Dwight Hartman, Charles Shenk and H.D. Swartzendruber from Park View Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg began meeting weekly at IHOP.

“We were a diverse group,” Swartzendruber says. “But we knew each other to some extent at Park View and were each recently widowed, which proved to be the common bond that helped us begin sharing on a personal level.”

A month later, Swartzendruber learned that a similar group of widowers who met regularly in Goshen, Ind., call themselves the ROMEOs. The group became the “Harrisonburg chapter.”
In early 2006, Barbara Moyer Lehman, associate pastor at Park View, suggested that group members might benefit from meeting with Jim Glanzer, a counseling practitioner at Family Life Resource Center.

For nearly a year, the ROMEOS met Friday mornings with Glanzer at the Daily Grind. Harold Kuhns, another Park View Church member, joined the group, followed by Harold Huber of Broad Street Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg.

“Having a professional counselor leading the discussions who had also been widowed proved quite beneficial,” Swartzendruber says. “Jim was able to draw us out to speak openly about things that we wouldn’t generally share, even with close friends and relatives.”

In addition to Brainard, Hartman, Huber, Kuhns and Swartzendruber, other members are Millard Showalter from Lindale Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg and Glendon Blosser from Weaver Mennonite Church, also in Harrisonburg.

“In general, men have difficulty sharing feelings on a deep level,” says Showalter. “Women seem more comfortable in doing this, but after losing a spouse I feel like we become more vulnerable and open to talking about difficult issues.”

Huber says, “We don’t talk a lot about our spouses, but the subject does come up, and we’re able to process our feelings of loss and what it means to be alone.”

Two members recently remarried. Charles Shenk moved back to Columbus, Ohio, and got married in February. Swartzendruber remarried in September.

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