Club mirrors U.S. in electing female leader
OAlbany n Friday morning, a new official portrait was hung on the wall of the stately President’s Room on the second floor of the Fort Orange Club, founded in 1880.
The newest portrait represented a historic moment in the annals of the city ’s oldest and most exclusive private social club as it was placed alongside 75 previous presidents — all men. Number 76 is Shannon Older, the first female president in the Fort Orange Club’s 140-year history. She was elected Thursday and the historic selection was announced at that evening ’s annual meeting and dinner as Kamala Harris was on her way to becoming the nation’s first female vice president-elect.
“It is an honor to be elected as the first woman president of the Fort Orange Club, which is such a special part of Albany and its history,” said Older, 54, of Latham. Older is a partner with The Dartmouth Co., a commercial real estate firm
based in Boston, and is mother to Eleanor, 17, and Gordon, 16. “I have always felt welcome at the club and respected for the contributions I made as an officer.”
In her acceptance speech, Older paid tribute to her father, Dr. Thomas Older, a retired heart surgeon, and a member of the club since 1972. Dr. Older was a board member and in the vanguard of a 1988 campaign to admit women as members. The first women joined in 1989. He encouraged his daughter to join the club, which she did in 1996 after relocating from Boston back to Albany. Older also served as the first female vice president and was the first woman elected as a trustee in 2007.
At the dinner, Older read a congratulatory note that attorney and longtime club member E. Stewart Jones sent when she became the first female board member 13 years ago. “Hallelujah,” Jones wrote. “Congratulations on the historic breakthrough. Many of us who had been championing this a long time had given up hope. Your presence on the board augurs well for the future of the club.”
Older joins a growing trend. The Union League Club in New York City, founded in 1863, elected Mary Beth Sullivan as its first woman president this year. Albany’s University Club, founded in 1901, elected Colleen Ryan as its first female president in 2013.
“It is an important responsibility and one Shannon is fully equipped to handle. She is the right person to be leading the club forward in these challenging times,” said Mark Lasch, a banking executive who will serve as Older’s vice president. Lasch has been a member for 35 years and previously served as a trustee and treasurer. His late father, attorney Frank Lasch, served as club president.
There are 59 women among the club’s membership of about 500. Older’s goal is to grow membership and to encourage women to take on governance roles beyond the two women board members currently among 14 trustees.
Older will continue to bend the tradition-bound Fort Orange Club to meet changing trends. Those include family-themed events that appeal to parents with young children; lighter fare at the bar in the tap room as an alternative to the formal dining room; fitness classes geared to women and men in a renovated athletic facility; and converting formal rooms into casual co-working spaces for young professionals.
The Fort Orange Club was founded four decades before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote. The amendment was ratified Aug. 18, 1920, after nearly a century of contention and protest.
The Fort Orange Club was a male-only enclave established by lawyers, bankers, politicians and business owners. Past presidents came from prominent families including Corning, Van Rensselaer, Ten Eyck, Thacher, Cogswell and others. New York governors and future presidents Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt were honorary members who attended events at the club, located in a grand Georgian mansion at 110 Washington Ave.
Full disclosure: I joined the club in the spring.
Shannon Older’s earliest memory of the club is from the mid-1970s, when she was 9 or 10. Her mother, Anne Older, brought her in the family station wagon while running errands to prepare a large party at their home for her father’s medical practice employees. Older remembered having to sit in the car in the parking lot while her mother met the chef at the kitchen door to borrow oversized pots and pans from the club. “My mother explained that women and children were not allowed inside the club at that time because it was just for men,” Older recalled.
Older’s husband, Matthew Amodeo, met Older’s father at the Fort Orange Club to ask permission to marry his daughter.
Now, Shannon Older is madame president, with all the keys to the clubhouse.