‘He was everybody’s dog’: Romeo, the boxer rescue who became a Hilton Head icon, dies
Hilton Head Island lost a piece of its heart this month with the passing of Romeo.
Barry Ginn, who owned the tan and white boxer dog that once graced the cover of Hilton Head Monthly magazine in his trademark goggles, lost a lot more than that.
The two were inseparable from the time Romeo was adopted from the Noah’s Arks Rescue in the spring of 2014 until Romeo was put to sleep Jan. 6 — his once 68-pound body riddled by cancer. More than 300 people commented on Facebook when Ginn broke the news.
“I cried like a baby,” Ginn said. “I can never get you to truly understand the relationship that he and I had. It was amazing. It was amazing how close we were.”
Romeo went with him to Town Hall meetings, to campaign debates when Ginn ran for mayor in 2018, to the bank, the liquor store, the casinos of Las Vegas on their 7,000-mile road trip, to the podium (and in the limo) when Ginn spoke at his mother’s funeral, to nursing homes and hospitals, to the first-class section on airplanes, to the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing golf tournament, and on countless 4:30 a.m. walks over the Charles E. Fraser Bridge on the Cross Island Parkway to Spanish Wells Road and back to Starbucks on Palmetto Bay Road.
Romeo posed as a redneck with comedian Jeff Foxworthy. He sat in with Ginn on WHHI-TV shows.
When Ginn fussed at Town Hall for not doing enough to protect bicyclers on the island, the video he took of how they do it in Salt Lake City included Romeo.
“We went a lot of places and we spread a lot of love,” Ginn said. “He was truly loved by everybody he touched.
“That’s the beauty of Romeo. It was a community affair. He was a community dog. David Oaks called him ‘America’s Dog.’ He was ‘Hilton Head’s Dog,’ no question.”
Both left for dead
And for Ginn, a Hilton Head entrepreneur and natural-born storyteller from the bustling Lowcountry town of Varnville, Romeo was a matter of life and death.
The way Ginn tells it, they were both left for dead before dog and man started leaning on each other.
Ginn says that he literally died twice when his life veered into a grim trifecta in 2012: He was divorced, his real estate business was crushed by the recession, and a rare flesh-eating bacteria attacked him. He was near death when the necrotizing fascitis was diagnosed. He underwent 14 operations in 72 hours, with surgeons removing nine pounds of infected flesh but saving his arm — and his life.
About the same time, Romeo was found tied to a South Carolina tree, skin-and-bones. He was rescued by Noah’s Arks in Ridgeland. He needed two years of therapy there to recover from the trauma, and even then, Romeo bit Ginn on their second visit.
“People ask me how I trained him,” Ginn said. “I just talked to him. I would sit him down and we would have a discussion. He understood. He was amazing.”
The dog never took his eyes off Ginn.
“I thought he was my father reincarnated,” Ginn said.
Mahogany box and a can of Folgers
Romeo came with his name.
“He was a lady’s man, no question about it, with those big, brown eyes,” Ginn said.
He also came with a fondness for beer.
And sticking his head out of the window of a moving car — thus, the goggles.
“He’s the reason I have this BMW convertible,” Ginn said.
And Romeo leading Ginn and a pack of early-morning bridge walkers is the reason Ginn, now 67, got into shape to run 14 half-marathons.
“When you die a couple of times, you have skeletons in your closet,” Ginn said. “The fear of dying, or the non-fear of dying.
“And when Romeo came into my life, that all went away. I can’t say enough about what he meant to me. Just the comfort.”
Ginn got a second boxer rescue in May through Carolina Boxer Rescue. Her name is Juliet. “She’s devastated, looking for Romeo,” Ginn said.
The three of them had a routine on Friday afternoons. They would go to the Tobacco Road store on Arrow Road, where owner Mickey Fulton babysat Romeo while Ginn showed property.
“We’d go over there on Fridays and smoke a cigar,” Ginn said. “That was our routine.”
So they’re going to have a little smoke-in there this Friday afternoon for Romeo.
Romeo was cremated and will come home in a mahogany box, Ginn said.
“And when I die, I’ve got a Folgers coffee can for me and they’ll put us both over that bridge we crossed hundreds of times together on our morning trek,” Ginn said.
“I was his caretaker,” Ginn said. “I wasn’t the owner. He was everybody’s dog. He had a thousand masters.”
