There’s a group of older men in Athens, Georgia, who meet every Wednesday for lunch. Mostly from the academic environment that permeates the social atmosphere of the area, they include a former concert master of the Athens Symphony Orchestra and a professor of occupational studies known for his development of whale watching off the coast of Massachusetts. There’s a highly respected retired judge, a retired public defender, the former President of the National Science Teachers Association, and by an odd quirk of circumstance, there’s me. Although my daughter is a UGA alumna - she got her PhD from Terry School of Business - I didn’t go to the University of Georgia, but it doesn’t matter. I try to keep my mouth shut, probably not enough, but they are polite enough to listen to me anyway. I suppose it’s kind of like listening to your Uber driver defile the SEC football conference rules when he’s really upset Georgia didn’t make the playoffs. I don’t know those rules either, my hometown team is in the ACC. I don’t really care, though, because I didn’t go to University of Miami, either.
The colleges I went to were night schools, extension schools that were made available to U.S. military service members around the world. It took me six years to get my first thirty credit hours, and I never attended any college after that. The company I interviewed with after my discharge hired me and raising my family pivoted to the forefront of my priorities. I can’t count the number of internal IBM company schools I attended in my time but I only took one other class toward my elusive goal of having a college degree.
It was that very first night school at the University of Maryland extension back in 1962 that really got me into the group. The school was at Bitburg Air Base, Germany, while I was serving as a flight controls technician with the 585th Tactical Missile Group. As fate would have it, one of our new neighbors in Athens after we moved here from Florida sixty years later, was Andy Horne. Andy was a professor in the same program at the same school several years after I attended there. We reminisced about Germany in general and the school and it’s intrinsic value toward a degree in particular. Andy, Dean Emeritus of the UGA College of Education, graciously invited me to lunch with the group, but fate tragically intervened and Andy died following heart by-pass surgery before I ever got to meet the group.
The invitation was again offered and I joined the group for lunch. I was thrilled when they cordially included me in the next lunch. They are a great group of like-minded people who love to discuss anything and everything under the sun. The reminiscing and stories are priceless. The ROMEOs are like that. That’s what one of the wives calls us. ROMEOS, Retired Old Men Eating Out.
Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
George Mindling
