BY LAWRENCE SOBCZAK
PUBLISHER
Regular readers may have notice how empty page 3 has appeared last week and this week.
Our hearts are empty announcing that Richard Beringer, the primary driver behind the “Our Past: People, Places & Things” column, died Friday, April 17, 2026.
Beringer, 79, was born June 20, 1946 and he was a native of Youngstown, Ohio.
He had moved to Romeo in the 1970s and fell in love with its historical richness.
That led him to joining the Romeo Historical Society where he has served as a trustee and a museum curator for decades.
You’ve probably met Beringer if you have ever attended any the Romeo Historical Society’s events over the past half century.
Richard has led many of the walking and biking tours through Romeo over the years.
He always made sure the Romeo Historical Society’s Bancroft-Stranahan Museum on Church Street as well as the Craig Blacksmith Shop and Romeo Arts and Archive Center on North Main Street opened their doors for their scheduled hours.
I have known Richard for at least 30 years from when I worked for The Romeo Observer. We both share a love of local history.
Beringer was a graduate of Youngstown State University with a degree in teaching and he had told me that his volunteer work with the historical society was a way to extend his teaching career past retirement.
He was friends with Mel Bleich, the late publisher of the Observer, and Beringer was one of the few people that Bleich trusted to peruse the newspaper’s archive dating back to 1866.
For at least 15 years, Beringer wrote “Reminiscence, from the files of The Romeo Observer” until that newspaper closed in 2015.
When I started The Record in December 2015, I approached Beringer with continuing the column which was a time capsule-style column that basically gave headlines or news blurbs in time intervals such as 25, 50 or 100 years ago.
He told me that researching the time capsule style column had become tedious and he was ready for a different idea.
The result was the “Our Past” format which a question was asked about a new photograph and an answer was posted the following week.
The idea was to have the readers help fill in information gaps the historical society had about people, places and things and share the results the following week.
If you think about it, Beringer, who was retired from teaching fifth and sixth grade students in the Utica Community School District, figured out a way to still give us homework each week with the column.
Some of Beringer’s favorite topics included the Ford Motor Company’s involvement in Romeo in the early 1900s, the interurban streetcar system that ran through downtown Romeo, and the plethora of local water mills which once dotted local streams.
He said that mills sparked his interest in history at a young age and his favorite mill was Lanterman’s Mill near his boyhood home in Youngstown, Ohio.
In 2018, I managed to get a rare private tour of Clifton Mill in Washington Township and I was able to include Beringer on the tour knowing his love of mills.
Since the 1930s, the Weymouth family has owned the fully operational Clifton Mill dating back to the early 19th century and has maintained it in excellent condition even though that last flour it milled was in 1967.
That private tour later led to the inclusion of the mill into the Romeo Historical Society’s 2018 Barn Tour, a mill presentation at the museum and material for the Our Past columns.
Richard made sure the knowledge he gained from the mill tour was shared as wide as possible.
Besides his involvement with the historical society, he was a busy husband, a father to his three daughters and a grandfather.
When he wasn’t busy with the latest project at his house, he was travelling around the world or just “relaxing” at his cottage Up North.
Just a week before his death, he had discussed with me the joy of being able to go out on bike rides again on the Macomb Orchard Trail after a hard winter.
Whether the column was written by himself, Joan (his wife), or another member of the historical society, he made sure it appeared in every issue of The Record, starting with issue #2. That’s a total of 530 issues uninterrupted!
Needless to say, I was shocked when I received a phone call from his daughter, Hope, on Saturday, April 11 to say a family emergency had arisen and her dad would not be contributing his article this week.
The following Saturday, April 18, I received a call from Tim Billo, president of the Romeo Historical Society, to say he had died the prior night.
The Beringer family has been very private about the matter and do not plan on a funeral or an obituary.
Billo said the historical society will be putting together an event to give his friends a chance to talk about his life and his contributions to the community. There is even talk of establishing a memorial fund to continue the pursuit of his interests.
Romeo’s museums are going to feel empty without Richard there to teach us about our past.
