Fridaynightpilgrims.com - President Street Legacy

If 318 President St. could talk, it would tell the enduring love story of Mike and Amy Romeo. In a tale Shakespeare could have written, Mike, 84 and Amy, 82, have spun a romance that has lasted more than six decades. Remember that scene from "West Side Story" where Tony and Maria see each other across the room at the dance? How the music slows and everything but them becomes a silent blur? That's what it was like for the Romeos when the two met at a Saturday-night dance in a Carroll Gardens parochial school gym. She was 16. He was 18. "I thought, 'She's mine,'" said Mike. "It hit me right in the eye. My mother said, 'When Mike saw Amy, that was it for Amy.'" Amy was thinking the same thing about Mike. "Handsome. Handsome," she said. "Like a movie star. He asked me to dance. I had my eye on him." Carroll Gardens could have been a million miles away from Manhattan in the 1940s, Amy recalled. "You think we had the Internet?" she said. "Saturday night, you went to a dance."
The couple married, had three children and moved in with Amy's mother at her Union St. apartment until they found the four-story brownstone, built in 1898 - a house that also holds memories for the last surviving relative of one of its earliest owners. But unlike the way she felt about her future husband that night at the dance, it wasn't exactly love at first sight when Amy saw the house. "It was a dump," she said. "Everything was very old. We stripped it down and brought in everything new." Frederick Quenzer, 70, whose grandfather Charles bought the house a year after it was built, agreed the brownstone was not in tiptop shape when it was sold in 1962, shortly after Charles died. "My grandfather was quite old," said Quenzer, who lives in Lynbrook, L.I. "It needed work." Quenzer's parents moved first to an apartment in Bay Ridge after they were married and then to a house in Lynbrook. He rarely visited his grandfather, but he remembered the house on President St. as "something different." By Joanne Wasserman Daily News Staff Writer Wednesday, December 24th 2008
In December of 2008 Mike Romeo Sr. went to his eternal reward in heaven leaving behind his bride Amy. This was a great loss for Amy only compounded by a series of debilitating strokes which left her bound to their home on President Street. After his father’s death, Michael Romeo Jr., understanding his mother’s great social spirit, began hosting Friday Night dinners on President Street with his mom.
In the beginning Chinese food was ordered for the meal, and eventually a gourmet meal of 10 courses would evolve from there. Slowly the number of guests and regulars grew to a steady 16 to 19 people. Walls had to be removed and tables needed to be extended. Even after Amy’s death in 2010 a family of friends from all walks of life and various political and social perspectives came together to create and enjoy each Friday night together. The group worked for three years and nine months as a body with each person playing a role and fulfilling a task to create a foodie’s dream meal. One October 12^th, 2012 the last Friday Night meal was served at 318 President Street on the occasion of a special third birthday of a little girl that has spent Friday nights in this way since she was in her mother’s womb.
Friday nights will continue, but as in all things change is inevitable and the only constant. We will continue to have Friday Night dinners at our new location, but none will be like those held on President Street where it all began before any of us were even born.

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