Long Island Vettes, Ltd.®
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An Accurate History of Long Island Vettes, Ltd.
This is the history of Long Island Vettes, Ltd. as I remember it. As one of the original members, and a Board Member for many years, I have accumulated many letters, emails, newsletters, documents, and photos over the years, from 2001 on. These are original and unedited.
Rich Fingerhut
The club was founded by Richie Shields when he and other members of a large Corvette club on Long Island felt that the organization was not focusing on local events and their culture was not in the best interest of members that were true local Corvette enthusiasts.
Figure 1
A letter was sent at the start of the year 2002 (see Figure 1). It hit home to many of us, and we decided to take a chance on a new club with a new beginning. RS had many connections in the Corvette Community, and [current member] Roy Brinker offered a space at Van Buren GMC for the fledgling club's first meeting.
A Board of Directors was nominated and voted on. Art Donnelly filed the paperwork to make it official, and thus we became Long Island Vettes, Ltd. on February 5, 2002; a not-for-profit social club 501(c)(7). We had a contest to provide the club with a logo, and approximately 13 -15 drawings were submitted. The club purchased Liability Insurance, a logo was chosen, and it was off to the races.
Events were planned and executed. The membership grew rather quickly, but the original founding members list prepared by RS, also known as the "Alpha Membership List" (page one) is shown here. (see Figure 2). The second page (which I cannot find) listed others, such as Al Roscoe, Richie Shields, and Tony Zabrocki.
As each member had a circle of "Corvette Friends", the word continued to spread about Long Island Vettes, Ltd., and how we operated, keeping things simple yet organized and efficient. The club started hosting car shows, which at that time were primarily all "Corvette Only" shows. The venues for our shows became larger, diverse, and more mainstream. Over the years we have had shows at [the former] Pastor Chevrolet in Westhampton, Castle Gould at Sands Point, Rothman's Steak House, Jones Beach, The Vanderbilt Museum, (beautiful, but logistically challenging), and more recently, our Annual FourLeaf Federal Credit Union All Car & Truck Show [formerly Bethpage Federal Credit Union], which was actually brought to us by many disgruntled members of another local club, who all joined
Long Island Vettes, Ltd. They all became a huge asset, and many became Board members as time passed.
Figure 2