Courier-Journal, The (Louisville, KY)

Casual conversation reveals men's meeting decades ago

January 30, 2008  Author: DALE MOSS Edition: INDIANA Section: News Page: 1B Dateline: NEW ALBANY, SOUTHERN INDIANA,

Vic got to know Uwe, Uwe got to know Vic. At breakfast in New Albany with a group of guys, these retirees had met one Wednesday. So they assumed. Theirs is a smallish bunch zealously without purpose beyond fellowship, one free of formality and so much as a name, to Vic Megenity's knowledge. The ROMEOs, Uwe Eickmann heard it was called, as in Real Old Men Eating Out. Anyway, Megenity and Eickmann were fine with being once-a-week friends, with dissecting issues both global and local over coffee at Frisch's. "We've got all kinds of solutions," Megenity said. "Sometimes they come true, sometimes they don't." Eickmann, 63, had traveled broadly marketing for a company that sold aerospace equipment. Megenity, 73, had taught middle school history as devotedly as it can be taught. No wonder they were drawn to this collection of accomplished men, professors and authors among it. "I may have complained about being retired, being bored," Eickmann said, trying to recall exactly why he joined. Last night's ballgame seems never a priority. Instead, not too long ago, the German-born Eickmann brought up his many years living in Japan. Megenity chimed in, how he had spent a summer there as a young teacher eager to learn. The federal government had sent him, among others, for life lessons in a part of the world in which the United States then had dramatic, divisive interest. The year was 1970; the war in Vietnam plodded. Megenity ventured as close as Indonesia and Singapore, sleeping in thatched huts and trying to tolerate the local cuisine. He kept copious notes, to contribute to an educational curriculum. And when duty concluded he chose to check out Japan. Megenity was aware somehow of a New Albany native living in the suburbs of Tokyo, a woman who agreed to help play host to his week-or-so visit. Turns out she is Katherine Eickmann, Uwe's wife. Neither Megenity nor Uwe Eickmann made the small-world connection until Megenity talked more, shared an experience in which he got lost late one night leaving the Eickmann's apartment for a home in which he was staying. "I didn't know where I was going, I didn't have money, I didn't have my passport," Megenity said. "I like being in control, and I was completely out of control." Megenity relates an incredible, unabridged version of his misadventure. Simply put, an exasperated Megenity finally made it back to Eickmann's place. As Megenity concluded to the group, the ears especially perked of one listener. "You're talking about me," Eickmann said. First names tend to suffice for this breakfast club. Looks tend to change over going-on-four decades. Megenity had not realized Uwe was Uwe Eickmann, much less that he was the husband of Katherine Eickmann. Why would he? To the next meeting, Megenity brought a picture taken when the two men actually had met. "They took me all around Tokyo, Uwe and Kathy," Megenity said. Eickmann feels rather embarrassed, not having remembered Megenity either. "We probably sat across from each other 10 times, 20 times," Eickmann said of their breakfasts together. Then again, he and his wife — who was studying in Japan when they met — entertained a stream of far-flung visitors in those bygone days. Plus, it indeed has been awhile and then some. "Many of the people you meet, you never see again," Eickmann said. Megenity and Eickmann continue to be primarily just Vic and Uwe in their looser-than-loose-knit group. Yet the men feel closer, of course, grateful for the chance reunion that group founder Kent McDaniel terms serendipity. Eickmann has begun rummaging through his old stuff for souvenirs of an era rekindled. Megenity said he, too, thinks commonly of a unique experience otherwise nudged to the back of his memory. "It's an important part of my past," he said. Dale Moss' column appears on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at (812) 949-4026 or dmoss@courier-journal.com. Comment on this column, and read his blog and previous columns, at www.courier-journal.com/moss. Copyright (c) The Courier-Journal. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc. Record Number: lou52161560