Morgan Channels/Collegian
The morning crowd at Jilly Beans coffee shop sips their coffee and chats softly over the strains of Christian contemporary music playing in the background. A gentleman, book in hand, walks slowly to the back of the shop where a sign sits on a coffee table. The sign reads: “Reserved for the ROMEOS. Tues-Fri 10:00 a.m. -11:00 a.m.”
The ROMEOs, or Retired Old Men Eating Out, meet regularly in this little corner of Jilly Beans. The group changes in size periodically, according to the oldest member, Tom Evans. He added with a wink that the group is open to the occasional woman, “but she has to be attractive.”
Members include people from the ages of 60 to 76 years with many different backgrounds. There are two women members currently, one being the wife of a member who has been a ROMEO for five years. She joined a year ago when they got married. The other woman member is a retired correctional officer.
Jim Hayne continues to practice law, despite the implication in the group’s name that its members are retired. Another member, Roger Brook, is a retired agriculturist.
The group started 20 years ago, according to Evans.
“A woman named Dottie and her husband Butch started it. They were having coffee at another restaurant before it got moved to Jilly Beans. Back then it could be a group of 12 people,” Evans said.
What started as an informal sales meeting, he said, began to collect more and more interested folks.
“They’ve been here as long as I’ve been here. They’re great, and I love having them in each week,” said Jill Nichols, owner of Jilly Beans, of the ROMEOs.
“We actively try to get new members,” Evans said. “We trade insults anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. If you bleed easily then you don’t belong in this kind of a group.”
“We have a very sarcastic sense of humor,” Brook said.
One of the female ROMEOs audits art classes at the college.
“She’s drawing lines,” Evans remarked. “She brings her projects down here from time to time and we tell her what we think.”
According to Evans and Brook, fellow member Don Scoville, the only native of Hillsdale, says he was a tool and dye-maker, but he has perfect hands, leading the members to joke that he is lying.
“This group keeps some of us reasonably sharp mentally. There is a certain amount of therapy involved with this group,” Evans said.
Brook said there are things he misses about retirement that the group helps replace.
“One of the things I’ve missed since retiring is the community coffee pot, where you can just talk to people once in a while,” Brook said.
Hayne, an active member who has an attorney-at-law office in the coffee shop joked, “I’m just their legal consul because they are all going to get into trouble.”
Jim, on the other hand, loves Obama jokes.
“You’ll have to hear his three jokes,” Evans said. “They go along with his four stories, which grow longer every time he tells them,” Brook added with a laugh.
