by Andrew Yamato

“In this room I can remember the older gentleman playing cribbage.”

Dino Veronese looks wistfully out the window of the club’s newly refurbished Card Room. Having joined in 1960, Dino is now one of those older gentleman himself–in fact, he’s the Montauk’s most senior active member. Having served two long stints as club president (1971-74 and 1980-91), he’s affectionately regarded as the club’s “Godfather”, but Dino would be the last person to point it out that it’s his formal oil portrait which hangs impassively in the club’s lobby. I was a member for months before I realized this myself, as my first and lasting impression of Dino was anything but intimidating: he simply got up and walked over to introduce himself to my wife Jenny and me, welcoming us to our first brunch at the club.

“We used to take our children here,” he recalls now. “Even when they were very young. As they start growing up, you’d take them to Sunday brunch, because you didn’t want to keep them up too late. My kids learned how to eat here, how to dine out.” Dino is still a regular at Sunday brunch, and still helping younger generations with their table manners: he recently gave our newborn daughter Vivi a baby bib.

“When I joined the club,” Dino continues, “the president of Pfizer was a member. All the presidents of all the various savings banks were members. Doctors from the Methodist Hospital were all here. The postmaster general, Ed Quigley, was a member. That’s the reason you have that mailbox in the vestibule of the club–he had the post office put it there! So you had all those various and sundry people as members and they would support the club, and support it well.” For me, at least, this all conjures the stereotypical image of a private social club: prosperous men gathering amid dark wood to smoke fine cigars and drink good liquor. It’s a classic, civilized scene, and one that would must have been fun for those lucky enough to get inside the door as Dino had. For all his obvious affection for that world, however, Dino recognized early on that it was destined for anachronism.

“When I was put on the board, and eventually became president and so forth, I realized it was important to change, to keep up with the times, and hence we brought in women as members. We had a Ladies’ Division with over 100 members, and they used to run their bridges on the first Tuesday of the month. I remember so well that they used to have these luncheons, especially in the spring months–May was the real big one–and if you didn’t make your reservation early enough, you were not going to be on the first floor, you’d be on the second floor, and no one wanted that!” Hearing this reminded me of how much the physical layout of the club had changed over the decades (the current second floor dining room having once been mainly a billiards lounge) and I asked Dino about the part of the club which–although I never personally experienced it–I find myself missing the most: the basement bowling alley.

“We had very active bowling leagues–a ladies’ bowling league in the mornings, men’s in the evenings, and a mixed league on Friday nights. There would be teams throughout the season, which for the men’s league would culminate in May with a tremendous beefsteak dinner. Men only, but the place would be just packed–sold out every time!” Food and the ritual of meals has clearly been central to the Montauk experience from the start. Lacking the shared educational or professional backgrounds which bond many other clubs together, the Montauk is in many respects first and foremost a dining club. When asked what the most memorable club events have been for him, Dino comes back again and again to the meals. Mothers’ Day dinners. Italian nights (back when that might have actually been a novelty!). A Japanese night complete with sushi, sake, and a koto player from the Japanese Consulate. Family meals on Sunday.

“We used to come for Sunday dinner. I can remember sometimes you had to wait down here [on the second floor] to get a table in the dining room [on the third floor] because it was so crowded! You have to remember, in those days you had Ebbets Field. The Brooklyn Dodgers would come a lot after games–you’d see them upstairs in the dining room! We were all Dodgers fans. To this day I don’t like the Yankees.”

Entertainment was not only confined to the clubhouse. “We would also have outings. We’d go to the theater twice a year. When ‘1776′ came out, we had so many people who wanted to go, we had a bus that left from here, took everyone to Radio City Music Hall to see the show, and then came back to the club–and we did it twice! We did the same thing with ‘The Nutcracker.’ Those bus things always sold out.” The club even used to sponsor a horse race at Belmont.

I asked Dino about what it was like to be an “under 35″ scrapper himself and was surprised to learn that even then the club had what were referred to as “Special Members”–i.e. younger members who might not be able to afford full membership but who were nonetheless the future of the club. “Without youth,” Dino observes, “you don’t have anything. That’s why I think it’s encouraging to see all these new members coming in because people move on. Age gets you, you can’t get to the club, people move away. We always tried to attract younger members by making the club as family friendly as possible–Santa at Christmas time, an egg hunt at Easter, children’s Halloween parties. Slide shows and lectures were held as well as the very popular Sunday afternoon musicales.” Hopefully the recent introduction of “Babysitter Night” on the last Friday of every month will help bring back this important dimension of the club.

When I asked Dino what he’d most like to see happen with the Montauk today, his response was what you might expect from someone who’s been coming for 50 years.

“I’d like everyone to show membership. I’m not sure how many of the new people know the old people, and vice versa. There’s always going to be some division between young and old, of course. I’m too old to stand at the bar these days, for example, but in my day, when we were young, we were all here on Friday nights too! So yeah, I’d like to see the young and old meld together more, and I think it’ll happen in time. I joined this club 50 years ago. Why do I like it? I like being among friends.”

Listening to Dino speak I’m again reminded that the Montauk really is much more than a pleasant atmosphere, some nice architecture, or good food. These things all make the club a great venue, but at its heart the Montauk is a community, and you need look no further than Dino Veronese to see that you get out what you put in.