Apparently I just imagined this whole thing. I had a group folder named WIRES where I had 2 grps. "Front" and "Back" and they were NOT rendering as lines no matter WHAT I did, but when I copied and pasted the groups into a new model and then pasted them back into the original they just magically rendered correctly and I saved the model out so I could send it to you.
Now I cannot reproduce the problem AT ALL as if it never happened.
So, thanks robcat! Not sure how you did it but it seems to be fixed. (Honestly, this really happened - I'm NOT making this up)