About the club
Our story
A hundred years ago a few neighbors decided Pleasantville deserved a Rotary club. We are still at it.
The Rotary Club of Pleasantville is a chapter of Rotary International, the world's oldest service organization, with 1.4 million members in more than 46,000 clubs. We are club 5034 in District 7230, which stretches from Westchester through Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island to Bermuda.
Locally that means about thirty members who meet for lunch every Thursday, listen to a speaker, and plan the work: scholarships for graduating seniors, a holiday luncheon with the high school singers, Thanksgiving meals for neighbors who need them, trees on Arbor Day, and the two fundraisers that pay for all of it. Internationally it means polio eradication, clean water, literacy and disaster relief, delivered through Rotary clubs on the ground wherever the need is.
Two organizations, one club
The Rotary Club of Pleasantville is a 501(c)(4) membership organization. The Pleasantville Rotary Foundation is a separate 501(c)(3) charity, recognized by the IRS since 2009, that holds and distributes the money we raise for scholarships and community grants. Gifts to the Foundation are tax deductible; dues and event tickets paid to the club are not.
Where we meet
Thursdays at 12:15 PM at Tesoro D'Italia, 160 Marble Ave, Pleasantville, NY 10570. Over the decades the club has met at the Open Gate, Crabtree's Kittle House, Casa Rina and The Riviera, and Tesoro has been home for the last several years. Visitors are welcome at any meeting; just let us know so we can save you a seat.
Timeline
A century in ten stops
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1923
Bert Carmer, Henry Koster and George Bell visit a White Plains Rotary meeting and bring the idea home. First meetings at the old Mount Pleasant Bank on Wheeler Avenue and the Community House.
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1924
The Rotary Club of Pleasantville is chartered on March 12 with 18 members. The club goes on to help launch the Chappaqua, Armonk and Briarcliff Manor clubs.
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1940s
Returning World War II servicemen start the Community Scholarship Fund and the Pancake Breakfast that still funds scholarships for Pleasantville seniors today.
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1980
Women are welcomed as members.
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2001
The first Westchester Wine Experience at Pace University. Over sixteen years it raises roughly $250,000 for Maria Fareri Children's Hospital, Sandy relief, the Food Bank and more.
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2009
The Pleasantville Rotary Foundation is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) charity so gifts to the club's scholarship and community work are tax deductible.
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2017
Hudson Valley Fermented replaces the Wine Experience with New York craft beer, cider, spirits and wine, raising about $150,000 for local causes through 2024.
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2022
The club raises $10,000 in two weeks for Ukraine relief through sister club Rotary Giżycko in Poland, and later $3,500 for Turkey earthquake relief.
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2024
Centennial. One hundred years of service celebrated at Pleasantville Manor on June 6.
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2026
Generous Pour Pleasantville debuts under the tent at Arc Stages, supporting sixteen local organizations.
Remembered
Members who shaped the club
- Russ Tompkins (1919-2014): World War II veteran, village fire chief and 34-year fire commissioner, Citizen of the Year in 1990, and the man who started the pancake breakfasts after the war.
- John Guion (1923-2017): flew 33 missions in the war, served as mayor from 1959 to 1963, and ran Guion Insurance, recruiting a generation of members.
- Hugo van Perlstein (1920-2015): club president in the late 1970s and youth exchange chair for more than thirty years.
