John DeLuca came to Las Vegas in 1941 from Los Angeles with the vision of Las Vegas being a major entertainment center. He established DeLuca Importing Company in 1944 and quickly became the dominant liquor wholesaler in Las Vegas. As the resort industry rapidly expanded following the opening of “Bugsy” Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel in 1947, DeLuca prospered. Like many of his wealthy contemporaries in Las Vegas, John DeLuca became involved with several philanthropic and civic undertakings in the decade preceding his death in 1960. Las Vegas’s first permanent organization promoting Italian –Americans social relationship was named the John Deluca Italian-American Club. (Excerpts taken from “Beyond the Mafia”, by Alan Balboni, Ph.D. highly recommended reading)
The “Clubs” fist president, Alfred Bossi, 1960., along with ten other board members had a goal to provide a common bond between those male persons of Italian descent. Their big dream was to build and own their establishment, their clubhouse, for members to meet, relax, eat and drink.
One of the more notable board members was Nick “Kelly” Fiore. Nick Kelly had worked at the Copacabana in New York City prior to coming to Vegas to serve as maître d’ at the Sands. His “acquaintances” in the casino and entertainment industry was a driving force to the growth of the “Club” and ultimately in 1961 the 1st Annual Ball fundraiser was held at the Riviera Hotel. There were over 2500 in attendance with all the biggest stars attending and supporting the fundraiser. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Vic Damone, Jimmy Durante, Frankie Lane, Sonny King, to name a few helped raise enough money to purchase the property and build the clubhouse at its current location on Sahara Ave.
In 1965, at the request of John DeLuca’s daughter, the “club” recorded a resolution to change the name to the ITALIAN AMERICAN SOCIAL CLUB OF SOUTHERN NEVADA.
Nick Kelly served as president and club manager in 1967. During that period until the late 1970’s, another very colorful board member, Mike Pisanello, who was head of the culinary union in Las Vegas was the volunteer chef. Although they really helped the club experience growth and popularity among the entertainment and casino industry, their warmth was not felt by many of the non-invited guests of members or nonmember Italian American residents. I personally remember the “Kelly Booth” where Nick would sit and observe the waiters and cash out customers out of his pocket. For the new members, like myself, the atmosphere was a bit intimidating, to say the least. Kelly was convinced he owned the club and he made many all over the country believe he did also. He had ultimately worn out his welcome as leadership and manager of the club. By the mid 1980’s the leadership changed and although the Club was sponsoring bocce tournaments, scholarships and at the direction of the Ladies Auxiliary, many events raising funds for nonprofit organizations, the membership had gone flat. We still had the annual Columbus Day Dinner Dance, the Halloween dance, the Ladies Auxiliary Western BBQ dinner dance and Christmas parties. The Club was facing building maintenance issues, operating expenses exceeded revenues, not to mention assimilation of Italian Americans.
By the late 1980’s, when I was first elected president in 1988, we realized in order to survive we had to change our ways and run the club more as a business. The purpose has always been to promote and enhance our Italian heritage and to foster goodwill in our community, but first we had to survive, then we had to grow. We had to have our employees such as managers, chefs, servers, bartender’s maintenance people have actual paychecks, not cash, with workers compensation insurance, withholdings, FICA etc…becoming more legitimate was not particularly popular with some, but we had to rise to the times.
Las Vegas has always had opportunities for the people willing to leave home and migrate to Sin City. The entertainment and casino industry attracted many to fill well paying positions. Construction was booming and every service was needed to accommodate the huge influx of new residents. It has been well documented who funded the initial growth of the casinos in Vegas, and you have all seen the movies glamourizing the “mob” influence in Vegas. Certainly, most accounts are true, some exaggerated. But in reference to our Club, and our history, Las Vegas had factions from every major city trying to get their piece of the action or pickings from the Vegas scene. Ever since my first visit and joining the Club in 1979 I learned who was from the Chicago Outfit, Detroit, New Your families, Buffalo wise guys and wantabees from all over. Many of those personalities visited and enjoyed the Club for its food and entertainment, none were actual members. They all recognized staying low and not bringing attention to the club and themselves, the club could survive. Actually, I never knew of any problems associated with the different factions enjoying our club. I have been in the administration for over 30 years and never heard anyone tell us or our managers, you have to hire this guy, or buy tomatoes or booze from these guys or any type of muscle you hear about in other older neighborhoods.
I remember having our phones taped at the club many years ago and seeing undercover cops sitting at the bar in their Hawaiian shirts drinking ice tea, watching in the mirror some of wise guys enjoying family style dinner. The wise guys would send them drinks and say hello and goodbye as they passed each other.
Those days were a bit colorful but really uneventful. There had never been an arrest or even and implication the club was influenced by any particular faction, ever! The stereotype lived on for many years, but as the mob and wantabees died off, or just went dormant the club just continues to grow and represent the Las Vegas Italian Americans as who we really are, good family community loving people.

1. Staying healthy
2. Growing our membership, spreading the word about our club
3. Making real efforts to inform and invite the younger generation to Giovani. All our members have or know younger Italian American’s that would enjoy being involved and networking with our growing Giovani members. They are our future.
4. Continue to help deserving Italian American students financially thorough our Scholarship Foundation.
5. Emphasize the importance of RSVPing on time.
6. Help fill our IAC cookbook with your favorite family recipes

Also, on a sad note, we had 10 no-shows. The no-shows created a financial hardship, as we had prepared enough food for 178 people. Also, if we had been notified of a cancellation, we could have provided seats for the people we had to turn away.

Thank you to event chairman Phil Luchetta for another great effort in organizing the Gala. I particularly enjoyed his comments as he welcomed our guests. He reminded us what the Columbus Day event/holiday represents to our Italian American heritage. He gave praise and thanks to our ancestors for their courage in coming to this great country and the challenges they encumbered and overcame to provide for their families, which include all of us.
Thanks to our great food and beverage team, Ben Spano, Jimmy Girard, Janine Pitchford, our chefs, servers, and bartenders for the excellent dinner and service.
I am sure you are going to enjoy our guest speaker for the November 5th meeting, Professor Michael Green of the UNLV Department of History, Ph.D. He is a very accomplished historian and author of many books, and I know you have seen him in every documentary that has anything to do with Las Vegas.
Next, regarding our Italian American Club cookbook, the recipes are coming in slower than we had hoped. I know almost everyone reading this newsletter has one person in their household who cooks every night. The task is simple. Choose one of your signature dishes, take a little more time to actually measure your ingredients, take pictures at each step and Roger Gillizzi will do the rest. Once Roger performs his skills by putting together the cookbook, I know you will want to purchase several copies to share with your friends and family. Roger is donating his time, and all the proceeds will benefit our Scholarship Foundation.
Mark your calendars for December 14 at 11:30 am, the Annual IAC Family Christmas Luncheon. No December meeting.
– Angelo