About two years ago, Kim-Ly Moynihan and Emily Wallace had just moved to Manhasset.
They didn’t know many people in town, and they were each referred to the Manhasset Plandome Newcomers Club as a way to build connections, they said.
The two met at the first meeting they attended and immediately became friends, Wallace said.
Today, they are continuing the club’s 40-year tradition as co-presidents of the Newcomers Club, so that other new residents can have the chance to make friends the way they did, they said.
“It’s a way to get neighbors together, new friends together, and allow people to get the chance to build new relationships, because it’s hard to move to a new town where you don’t know so many people,” Moynihan said.
The club is organized around several social events throughout the year as a way for newcomers to break the ice with neighbors.
“We don’t really have family here, so having the club has been a godsend because we have met so many nice people, and as the year went on you really do start to build true friendships,” Moynihan said.
Wallace said she first heard about the club from the previous owners of the house she lives in now.
“They were telling us about all the clubs in town, and they said they met so many new people from the Newcomers Club, and it’s a great place to start,” she said.
The club’s flagship event is the progressive dinner, which ends the year of activities in June. Moynihan described the dinner as “house hopping,” where members gather in one place for appetizers, then break off into groups for a catered dinner at a handful of members’ houses. At the end of the night, the members come together again at one person’s house for drinks and dessert.
“Everyone still talks about this year’s progressive dinner; it’s been an annual tradition,” Moynihan said. “I think because it’s at people’s homes you feel like there is a greater intimacy with an event like this.”
Moynihan and Wallace said the dinner is probably as old as the club itself, and hasn’t missed a year from what they’ve heard from past members.
One woman who attended the progressive dinner over 30 years ago came back again for this year’s event in June, Wallace said.
“She was telling us about how she remembered attending and how it was a wonderful event,” Moynihan said. “I just thought it was so cute that so many decades could go by and someone can still have this positive, warm memory about progressive dinner and meeting their closest friends through that event.”
Moynihan and Wallace said the club is open to any local resident who wants to join, whether they’ve been in Manhasset for a week or a few decades.
To start off the year’s events for the women of Manhasset, the Newcomers Club is hosting a Ladies’ Kick-off Event on Oct. 6, so the co-presidents can introduce themselves and what events they have planned.
This year, Moynihan and Wallace have planned a couples’ social event, Thursday Night Football men’s night, Ladies’ Fitness night, and a second annual Valentine’s Day dinner.
“We have a lot of momentum from the previous year that we hope to carry forward,” Wallace said. “Our couples events were very popular and we are looking to expand our men’s events and monthly neighborhood socials.”
Moynihan said she feels happy to be part of a Manhasset tradition that has helped so many residents and families plant roots in the community.
“It feels good to know that the club will keep going,” she said. “There’s this continuity, nothing very formal set in place every time you pass it down, but yet it still continues to keep going. It’s nice to be a part of that lineage.”
