NASHUA – Dominick J. Giovinazzo, the easygoing, neighborly man who some 45 years ago took a loosely organized boys’ club that met in a rundown Main Street office building and helped shape it into today’s nationally acclaimed Boys & Girls Club of Greater Nashua, has died.

A native of the Long Island, N.Y., town of Glen Cove, Giovinazzo came to Nashua from Omaha, Neb., in January 1971 and promptly agreed to take the reins of what was then named the Boys’ Club of Nashua.

Giovinazzo died Saturday morning after a brief illness, according to his family. He was 77. A full obituary appears on Page 15.

"Dom’s the one who took the Boys’ Club way beyond checkers and Ping-Pong," former board member Jim Lambert said at the club’s 20th anniversary celebration in 1991.

Donald Norris, who in the mid-1960s began drumming up support to open a boys’ club in Nashua, said in 2011 that bringing in Giovinazzo to lead the fledgling club "was one of the biggest boosts we got" in those early years.

Giovinazzo in 1973 oversaw a $650,000 capital campaign that allowed the club to construct its first – and current – clubhouse at 1 Positive Place the following year.

From then until his retirement in 1999, Giovinazzo guided the organization through multiple expansions and renovations to accommodate a rapidly growing membership, which went coed in 1985.

Many of Giovinazzo’s legions of friends and associates over the years often credited his gracious, unassuming nature for his success in recruiting the support of the late golf pro Phil Friel in organizing a golf tournament to benefit the club.

But Giovinazzo often deflected the credit to Friel, calling him a generous man who was very easy to talk to.

Giovinazzo, in a 2003 Telegraph interview, recalled that 1978 conversation with Friel.

"I got to know Phil, like everyone over there did," he said, referring to Green Meadow Golf Club in Hudson, of which Friel was the pro at the time.

"I went to visit him in his office one day. I just said, ‘Phil, I’d like to run a Boys Club tournament,’?" Giovinazzo said in the 2003 interview.

"We can do that," Friel answered.

Giovinazzo took it a step further.

"But Phil, I don’t want to pay anything."

"Well, we can do that, too," Friel replied.

"He said it just like that," Giovinazzo said. "I was delighted."

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 594-6443, dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com or @Telegraph_DeanS.

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