It’s Monday afternoon and a group of elderly gentlemen are trading hospital-billing horror stories over sandwiches in the conference room of the Town of North Hempstead Department of Services for the Aging building in Roslyn Heights.
“You know what? Needle them. Get on them,” one man advised another.
The conversation turned to medical insurance fraud as it kept up a frenetic pace.
“People are coming up with new ways to scam the government,” one man said.
Then the conversation spun to presidential politics, and someone said he liked Donald Trump.
“If he’s such a good businessman, why did he go bankrupt two or three times?” another countered.
“Oliver North was my hero,” said someone else.
“What I want to do is decaffeinate the Tea Party,” another one quipped.
The eight men gathered in the room represented about half the number who have been attending the get-togethers of these ROMEOs (Retired Old Men Eating Out) as part of the town’s Project Independence program. Project Independence aims at assisting older residents to remain in their own households, and includes social interaction programs such as the ROMEOs.
Many of the elderly men in the group are widowers and enjoy the interaction with their peers.
“You hear a lot of different points of view. I think it opens up a lot of people’s minds,” said 89-year-old Lou Pasternak, who claims to be among the oldest member of the elderly men’s group.
“Everybody’s over 60. Some have wives, some don’t,” said 73-year-old Paul Glicksman. “It’s having a good conversation. It’s the camaraderie.”
Dave Linden, 82, saw a newspaper article about ROMEOs in another area of Long Island and approached the town about starting a similar group and several months ago.
A short time later, the Town of North Hempstead ROMEOs held their first meeting.
“Men do not congregate socially as women do. I thought it would be great for socializing,” Linden said.
The men have had two meetings at diners, but didn’t find it to be the right environment for a group discussion. So they’ve been convening at 12:30 p.m. with their brown lunch bags at the Department of Services for the Aging headquarters to the delight of department Commissioner Evelyn Roth.
Roth said things have worked out so well that the group is threatening to out-grow the building’s conference room.
“I think we’re going to have to. I’m sure that we’re going to have another ROMEOs group,” said Evelyn Roth. “They enjoy getting out and just having someone to argue with.”
And she said some elderly women in the community have been asking why a Juliets group can’t be established.
Meanwhile, the North Hempstead ROMEOs reached a consensus on Monday to scout out some area diners so they could live up to the group’s acronym. But there wasn’t a consensus on much else at the two-hour luncheon.
“If we don’t raise the debt ceiling, there is no way the American government can do business,” Linden said.
Another man who’d already identified himself as a Ronald Reagan fan turned the discussion to the very long-term risk of Muslims taking over the U.S.
“They have a plan. They take 300 years,” he said.
“They’re not taking over. Where are they taking over?” another countered.
“Every mosque in the U.S. is loaded with ammunition and bombs,” the Reagan man replied.
“You have to be very careful about what you see on TV and what you read in the newspapers,” someone else chimed in.
No one disagreed with him and for just a moment, there was a pause in the conversation.
