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Barry Romo: Friend, Comrade, Brother

By Joe Miller

Most of us have a few individuals who stand out in our lives as people who have influenced us in some way. For me, one of those people was my friend, my comrade, Barry Romo.

We lost Barry this year but have not lost his memory and how he changed and challenged us. Let me step back a bit…

It took me a while to join VVAW. I am not a combat veteran and did not feel I had any real claim. I never served "in-country." However, I received the Vietnam Service Medal from my time on board the USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) for two WESTPAC cruises, 1964-65 and 1965-66.

Despite this, Bart Savage, who was then organizing a VVAW chapter in Chicago, invited me to join in 1970. Given my work and family obligations, I was as active as I could be from then to early 1972. Meetings at the Wobbly Hall or Bart's apartment. Local demonstrations in the city or outside the base at Great Lakes. I participated whenever possible.

We moved away from Chicago in May 1972. This was just before Barry and the VVAW National Office moved to Chicago. I never got the chance to meet him then. I had no direct contact with VVAW for the next fifteen years as I pursued graduate school and temporary teaching jobs, including four years in Australia.

Soon after my return to the US, the "Welcome Home Parade for Vietnam Veterans" was to take place in Chicago in 1986. I learned that VVAW would participate and decided to join their contingent. I learned about someone named Barry Romo, who was a vocal leader of VVAW. I wanted to reconnect, to get political again in Reagan's America, especially in relation to US aggression in Central America—an issue I was very active on while living in Australia.

My 70-year-old aunt, an Army veteran from 1945-55, wanted to join me. We arrived too late to find the VVAW marchers but joined the parade anyway. It would take another year to make the connection, as I took teaching jobs wherever I could.

In the summer of 1987, I was back in the Chicago area, preparing to move to a new job at the University of Northern Iowa. I stayed at my folks' place and spent some time with my kids before the move.

The 20th Anniversary of VVAW was coming up on June 13th, with a ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fountain on Wacker Drive, followed by a celebration at Bethany United Church on Chicago's Northside. I was looking forward to finally reconnecting with VVAW more directly. I invited my fifteen-year-old son to join me. He was already a fan of Country Joe, who would be there.

During the ceremony, I got to meet Barry and many other VVAW members I had never met during my early years with the organization. The speeches were all very powerful, and I felt I found my political "home" once again. My son and I also decided to attend the event at the church, where we got to chat with Barry a little more and meet his little daughter, Jessi. My son got an album signed by Country Joe. I reconnected with Ray Parrish, whom I had known as a student activist at the University of Illinois in the late 1970s. This began a nearly forty-year connection with VVAW and Barry Romo.

The job in Iowa did not work out, and I ended up back in Champaign, Illinois, working as a copy editor for the University of Illinois Press. By a strange twist of fate (this has happened many times in my life), I was asked to take up the academic advisor position in political science at the University in early 1989.

I now lived closer to Chicago and the VVAW National Office. My contacts with Barry grew more regular. VVAW was very involved with the efforts to remove US bases from the Philippines, and I would travel up to Chicago to join Barry in community meetings with Filipino activists. Political activists in Champaign-Urbana also brought Barry down to hold public discussions on the issue.

This became a regular activity, bringing Barry to C-U to discuss or lecture on whatever political issue was "hot" at the time. I also invited him to join my classes on the political history of the Vietnam War and Hollywood treatments of that war. He did this every semester until I retired in 2013.

Barry developed a close political and social relationship with local activists, and we would invite him and other VVAW members like Bill Branson to join us for political discussions, training in security for demonstrations, and just social gatherings where Barry and VVAW became a regular part of the scene in Champaign-Urbana. We eventually organized a VVAW chapter there, thanks to his support and regular contact.

On a more personal level, Barry and I became close friends. He would stay in my flat when he came to Champaign. My family came to know him….my daughter and granddaughter called him "Uncle Barry." When I was up in the Chicago area, visiting my mom and dad, Barry would come over and chat with them. He had a deep connection with my dad, as a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge. My mom appreciated Barry as a close family friend, though she was never a fan of his facial hair—she had a thing about that. Barry attended their wakes and funerals in 2010 and 2013.

My last real discussion with Barry followed the VVAW Memorial Day event in Chicago in 2023. He was becoming frail, but we sat together and chatted for some time. I will carry that memory for the rest of my life.

Barry could be difficult and ultra-argumentative at times. But, in the end, I will always appreciate his breadth of knowledge, kindness, devotion to friends, and deep commitment to struggles for social justice anywhere and everywhere. He educated hundreds, perhaps thousands, of my students. Many of them became activists or educators. His shadow is a long one across this country and even overseas.

Barry Romo was my friend, a comrade, and most of all, my brother in struggle!

Joe Miller is a board member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Barry Romo, Le Ly Hayslip, and Joe Miller at the UI, November 1993.

Joe Miller at Barry Romo Memorial Day event in Chicago, May 27, 2024.