In 1936, when the Amity Club was formed, the City of New Haven had the largest per capita population of persons of Italian birth or extraction in the entire state of Connecticut. Constituting almost half of the population of the city, it was a tightly ethnic, Italy-oriented group.

During the first third of the nineteen hundreds, when the largest waves of Italian immigrants, including those who were establishing their roots in the New Haven area, were adjusting to life in America, these immigrants worked hard and raised large families. Their cherished ambition was to give their children the benefit of a good education, then so easily attainable in the excellent New Haven public school system. Most Italian parents came to the United States with only a rudimentary primary school education, circumscribed by the poor economic condition they were subjected to in the old country. They found respite from their routine daily lives of hard work by seeking social intercourse, mainly with their “paesani”, people from the same hometown or region they came from. To fill the social void in their lives they organized a plethora of small clubs, “circoli” and “associazioni”.

The New Haven City Directory for the year 1935 attest to the fact that, in a listing of all the clubs and associations in the metropolitan New Haven area, over fifty had Italian names. Their membership was composed almost entirely of Italian born immigrants who still spoke Italian in their clubroom meetings and social activities.

It was a fact of life in the nineteen thirties that the controlling ethnic group in New Haven was composed of native born Americans; and that from the upper strata of this group, the membership of a number of well-established service clubs with national affiliations, Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions, was drawn. In that period these clubs had, at most, a token representation of members of Italian extraction. As an example of such token recognition, Anthony J. Verdi, a brother of well known surgeon, Dr. William Francis Verdi, and the successful co-owner of the Verdi-Balsamo-Coal Co., was a member of the Rotary Club, the oldest of the New Haven Service clubs.

One of the few members of Italian ancestry in the Kiwanis Club, the second oldest service club, Frank Rubino was an architect who had become a leading building contractor and real estate developer in the New Haven area. Although proud of his status as an American citizen, he was also extremely loyal to his Italian heritage, and he made no bones about defending it before American friends and associates. As an active member of the Kiwanis Club, he nonetheless, also realized, that, deep down, he was still considered somewhat of an outsider by many Kiwanis members.

Frank Rubino had taken a prominent role in the representative committee of citizens of Italian origin involved in the massive campaign for financial assistance to the Italian government following the great flooding natural disaster, which engulfed a large area of Italy in early 1936, causing overwhelming devastation.

As a young lawyer, just out of a law school, and trying to develop a practice, I had the good fortune to be on the flood relief committee, where I met and worked closely with Frank Rubino, becoming quite friendly with him and his family. He was well aware of the multitude of small Italian clubs in the New Haven area, existing mostly for social purposes. With his background of service club experience as a member of Kiwanis, he believed strongly that, with the constantly growing number of professional and business men of Italian background, a service club, patterned after the Kiwanis Club, should be possible to form, drawing membership from the group. He was fully convinced that such a service organization could contribute a great deal to the betterment of life in New Haven.

But, as a cardinal principle, he believed that the service club he envisioned should have members who at al times would consider themselves Americans first, although always remaining proud of their Italian heritage.

Frank started to discuss his ideas and plans for such a club with me on the many occasions that we met at his house; and beginning in the summer of 1936, and through that fall, we began to canvass the names of various business and professional men of Italian origin who already were making their mark in the New Haven area, and could form the nucleus for such a service club. He held several informal meetings in his spacious home on Westwood Road in Westville, to which he invited a number of well-known leaders in the Italian-American community to discuss his ideas for a new service club. These included Alfred J. Lorenzi, a well-known business man who was greatly respected by the sizeable north Italian citizenry of New Haven; Aurelio Guerrieri, manager of a New Haven office of the Prudential Insurance Company; James Poole (nee Puglia) a high ranking engineer with the Southern New England Telephone Co.; Vincent Carangelo, an official of G & O Mfg. Co.; Dr. Charles Culotta, a leading pediatrician, and instructor at the Yale Medical School; attorney John Maresca.

At the outcome of these sessions, toward the end of 1936, a small group of approximately 15 gathered together in the Hof-Brau restaurant, at the corner of Crown and Church Streets, to establish a new service club whose membership would come from outstanding business and professional men in the New Haven community. Some of the original members at that meeting were: Frank Rubino, Dr. William Battista, Vincent Carangelo, William Celentano, Frank Cipriano, Dr. Charles Culotta, Serafino Ginnetti, Aurelio Guarnieri, Alfred J. Lorenzi, John Maresca, Fred Mignone, Philip Pastore, James Poole, William Raffone.

At the initial Hof-Brau meeting, one of the first matters acted upon was the selection of a name for the fledgling club. Many suggestions were forthcoming but, finally, the name “AMITY CLUB” was proposed by Fred Mignone. Fred argued in favor of the appropriateness of the name Amity because it contained with it “AM” as part of the name “America” and “ITY” as part of the name “Italy”. But beyond that, he emphasized that the dictionary meaning of the word “Amity” is “peace and friendship, friendly relations, friendliness”. Its synonyms are “good will, friendship, harmony”. The group present accepted the name as appropriate because of its brevity and meaning.

At this first organization meeting in 1936, Frank Rubino, the club’s godfather, was elected President, Alfred J. Lorenzi, Vice President and Fred Mignone, Secretary.

With a name selected, the officers elected, the next step was to gain official recognition of the club’s existence by the Secretary of the State’s office, by the filing of the required “Article of Association”. Fred Mignone, as an attorney, volunteered to draw up the “Article of Association” which was dated January 27, 1937, and was filed in the office of the Secretary of State of Connecticut on February 16, 1937. This document lists Frank Rubino, Alfred J. Lorenzi and A Frederick Mignone, as the subscribers who “associated themselves as a body politic and corporate pursuant to the statute laws of the State of Connecticut”. The Articles of Association set forth the scope and aspirations of the new club.

The club started to have dinner meetings regularly every two weeks, first at the Hof-Brau restaurant and, in later years, at various New Haven restaurants, until it settled for regular dinner meetings at the Melebus Club. At one of the early meetings it was decided that the club ought to have a club song, and Ed Pastore, the brother of Judge Philip Pastore, wrote the words of our beloved Amity song, sung to the tune of the old German folk song “O Tannenbaum, my Tannenbaum”. William Raffone became a leader of the choral singing, a chore he still performs with gusto at the close of each meeting. And another detail of historical interest concerns the late Amity member, Dr. Giuseppe Terranova, William Raffone’s father-in-law, a versatile artist, as well as a highly respected dentist, who designed the Amity pin, with its letters “A” and “C” at each side of a central torch.

In retrospect it can safely be said with pride that the Amity Club has lived up to Frank Rubino’s aspirations; and it has proven its worth over the years by its community service and contributions. As a very core objective in the founding of the Club, the giving of financial assistance to deserving students to enable them to secure a college education, the Amity Scholarship Trust Fund has grown consistently over the years, and has given substantial aid to a large number of college students without regard to race, creed or color. A wide variety of other worthwhile projects have been carried out over the years, aimed at promoting the civic betterment of New Haven.

Let us all continue to cherish the words of the Amity Song, that Amity is “the club we love the best, to thee we’ll cling and stand the test, let truth and service be our goal, exalt the life, make pure the soul and ever on the chorus role, Amity, my Amity.

November 19, 1985
A. Frederick Mignone