Socializing is part of healthy aging. A group called ROMEO helps older men connect : Shots

Self-reliance is a cherished American trait, and men in particular embrace it. Many have been raised to be strong, in the old-fashioned sense — not to show emotion and not to lean on others. But that can make it difficult to offer older men help when they need it.

Jess Maurer knows this well. She’s the executive director of the Maine Council on Aging. Maine is the country’s oldest state, with 23% of its population over age 65. She says aging can be challenging for everyone at times, including men.

“We kind of, as a stereotype, have this idea that men are OK and we don’t need to do programming or specific outreach to them,” she says. “That’s a stereotype that’s wrong.”

Still, Maurer says, it can be tough to reach men because they’re the least likely group of people to admit it when they have a problem. While many women have built up supportive communities over decades, “a lot of men don’t have that skill of reaching out,” she says. “But if you are experiencing a lack of connection and don’t feel like you have purpose, you can easily slip into depression and challenges.”

Men over 75 have the highest suicide rates in the U.S. There are many reasons for this, says Mary Gagnon, director of suicide prevention at NAMI Maine, a mental health nonprofit. Among them are loss, sickness and the perception of being a burden to others. Access to weapons also plays a part. Weaving through all this is social isolation, which claims plenty of men once they stop working or after a spouse dies.

But Gagnon says there is hope on that score. “The enemy of suicide is connection,” she says.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call, text or chat 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

One effort to connect older men with others is happening in Harpswell, Maine, a coastal community north of Portland, where volunteering is big, especially when it comes to food.

Beyond a peanut butter sandwich

It all started when a volunteer-led group, Harpswell Aging at Home, noticed men were missing from a lot of their activities. Also, drivers for their homemade-food delivery service, Meals in a Pinch, encountered many single, older men who didn’t get out, or cook.

“So they’re eating cereal or hotdogs or a peanut butter sandwich, and that’s not a very good long-term solution,” says Harpswell Aging at Home volunteer Surrey Hardcastle.

She grabbed another volunteer, Tom Mahoney, and tasked him with coming up with something that would get men out and socializing with other guys. Mahoney did some research on isolation and loneliness, and convened a group of local men to help him come up with a plan. He says initially, many were skeptical of the idea, and he had to be careful how he framed it.

“If we said it was a support group for men, they’re not gonna come,” he says. “Because that would indicate, or say to them, ‘I’m vulnerable, I need this.’ And we don’t want to be perceived as being vulnerable.”

He and others landed on a monthly lunch named ROMEO – Retired Older Men Eating Out. He got the idea from other grassroots ROMEO groups around the country. It’s a concept that gained traction after broadcaster Tom Brokaw mentioned the idea in his 1998 book, The Greatest Generation.

Harpswell’s first ROMEO lunch last September had more volunteers than attendees, says Mahoney. But attendance has grown from 10 to 12 men that day, to around 55 at the last few gatherings. The free lunches include a different speaker each time, talking about everything from avoiding scams, to how to take good photos with your phone, to fishing.

‘Stubbornly, stupidly independent’

One of the attendees is Sam Powers. He’s traveled all over the world. He’s now 80, has Parkinson’s disease and also had a stroke last summer. He lives alone in an apartment and uses a walker to help him get around. Hanging on the wall behind him is a framed photograph of a younger Sam next to a motorcycle, in dark glasses and a leather jacket.

He describes himself as “stubbornly, stupidly independent.” He says he’s bumped into people he knows at the lunch gatherings, and has met two or three new people there as well. And that’s as close as he’ll get to saying the lunches help him.

Tom Mahoney says this is what he’s talking about. He says there’s nothing wrong with men being self-reliant, and that having those skills can be a very good thing.

“But we still have a need, like anyone else, to be connected to people,” he says. “And that’s what he was missing, but wasn’t saying.”

Jim Hays isn’t going to say it either. He’s a lifelong Mainer and retired harbor master of nearby Bailey Island. He’s someone who, to begin with, wasn’t sure the idea of bringing men together would work. But he now attends the ROMEO lunches each month, initially prodded by his wife, who he says has always been more social than he is.

“We men, we have worked all our lives and it’s hard to get out of the chair and get involved with something,” he says. “You know, we lose our contacts with the outside world, and it takes something like this to pull us back in.”

But he says the pulling is going well. Surrey Hardcastle agrees. She says the ROMEO men are going on to get together at other times.

“It’s very, very exciting. It’s doing just what we wanted it to do and just what all the research says is needed,” she says, to encourage older men to become healthier and less isolated through human connection.

This story was written with the support of a journalism fellowship from The Gerontological Society of America, The Journalists Network on Generations and The John A. Hartford Foundation.