Making Waves

The owners of Nutley's private Le Terrace Swim Club were accused of banning people of color as members and guests. With one of two lawsuits settled, one thing is certain: After 47 years, they no longer will own the club. But what's next?

By Leslie Garisto Pfaff, njmonthly.com June ’03 issue, from the Web May 20, 2003

Nutley, NJ -- With its gambrel-roofed colonials and tree-lined streets, its well-tended parks and pristine soccer fields, Nutley could be any small town in Essex County. It may be a little more homogeneous than most: According to the 2000 U.S. census, 88 percent of the town's residents are white. The population flow may be a little less fluid too. If you were born here, there's a good chance you'll spend your life here; if you're new to town, you may never quite shake the feeling of being an outsider. But like many of the communities that surround it, Nutley is a family town—a place that prides itself on its good schools, safe streets, and civic-minded citizens.

By all accounts, Le Terrace Swim Club on Evergreen Avenue has always been a family place—a clean, safe, private club that allowed area families, the ones willing to pay as much as $1,000 for membership, to beat the summer heat. But things got decidedly messy when a little girl's birthday party last year brought to light what many people had whispered about for years: that the club's owners, Patrick Nardone and his wife, Ray, barred people of color from the premises with unilateral authority they believed was covered by the club's private status and a clause in the membership agreement that states, "Management reserves the right to admit and discharge any persons it deems inappropriate to the safety and continuity of the club."

Within a year, one of two anti-discrimination lawsuits that resulted from that incident was settled without a trial, the second trial was in the preliminary stages of discovery, and a new greeting had been recorded on the Le Terrace answering machine, prior to what would have been the club's 48th year of operation: "You have reached Le Terrace Club. The club will not be opening for the 2003 season. We appreciate the members' patronage over the years...."

In April a mediator ruled in favor of the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights, which filed the first suit. As a result, the Nardones agreed to pay $25,000 in lieu of a penalty, voluntarily submit the club's membership and admission policies for state review and monitoring and acknowledge that Le Terrace, if the Nardones continued to operate it, would now be considered a "place of public accommodation" and not a private club. While the details of the Le Terrace sale were being finalized as this issue went to press, the club will apparently open this summer as the Diamond Beach Swim Club. The policy concessions will become moot for the Nardones when they no longer own the club.

"There was no admission that any of the allegations were accurate,"says the Nardone's lawyer, Donna duBeth Gardiner. "It was cheaper to pay the $25,000 and put it to bed than to pay me to fight the DCR and the Essex County case. It was strictly a business decision."

The second suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey on behalf of two families and two individuals, remains in New Jersey Superior Court. As the club's new owners take over, Nutley residents find themselves battling a blanket assumption of bias that has evolved since Le Terrace's alleged policies first drew the attention of area newspaper and television outlets, Internet chat rooms, and even a CNN talk show.

Annmarie Giordano of Bloom field joined Le Terrace in April 2002. It was closer to the Nutley dental practice where Annmarie has worked as a receptionist since 1988 than their previous swim-and-athletics club, J.T.'s Skaters' World in West Orange. Last June 6, Annmarie stopped by Le Terrace at Patrick Nardone's request to show him the guest list for their daughter Cara's eleventh birthday party.

Annmarie didn't think much about the request; since the club charged by the head, she figured it was some kind of accounting issue. She says she handed the list to Patrick Nardone and watched him leap to his feet and pace the open expanse at the club's entrance. "And he's [slapping his forehead], saying, ‘We've got a problem here. What kind of names are these? Do any of these children have brown skin? Are there any black children on this list?' " Annmarie told him that several of the children were Filipino—"no browner than me," she added, proffering a well-tanned arm—and one was African-American. Nardone's alleged response, that Le Terrace was "a European club," confused her.

She says confusion gave way to anger when she realized that "European" was Nardone's euphemism for "white."

"This is the United States of America," she told him. "This is Essex County. We're a diverse people."

" ‘It's not me,' " she says Nardone replied. " ‘You have no idea how prejudiced the people of Nutley are.' "

That evening, Annmarie and her husband spoke in disbelief about the incident and their options. "I'm thinking to myself, What do I do as a parent?" Philip says. "These are families who've eaten in our home. We've gone out socially. We go to church together." What if they held the party and slurs were made in front of the children or their parents? On the other hand, Cara's friends had been chattering excitedly about the party for days. How could the Giordanos cancel?

The answer occurred to Philip the next day, on his way to work. His eyes were on the Parkway, but his mind was still on Le Terrace. He called J.T.'s and booked Cara's party there. Then he began calling local newspapers, television stations, anyone he could think of who might tell his story. "This is children," he says, as if no further explanation is needed.

On June 11, in response to one of Giordano's phone calls, the Secaucus-based UPN/9 led its nightly news hour with a story detailing Annmarie's experiences at Le Terrace. In Nutley, Catherine Russo was sitting in her living room, watching the news with an unraveling sense of shock. Eleven months earlier, she'd arrived at the swim club with her four young children and two guests. The guests were Marci Shepard, a student at Nutley High School who'd been living with the Russos since her father, a Nutley substitute teacher, died a month earlier, and Shepard's best friend, Stacy McCann. Shepard is a third-generation Nutley native; her father and her grandfather, an auxiliary policeman and visible civic activist, were also born there. "Everybody knew our last name," she says. The Shepards are African-American.

That day, Catherine Russo was signing in Shepard and McCann, who is white, as guests when the attendant at the desk allegedly asked them to wait while he consulted with Patrick Nardone. He returned, saying that the club wasn't accepting guests. Catherine says she escorted her children into the pool area, told Marci to call her husband, Michael, and went in to confront Nardone. She says Nardone asked her to leave immediately, telling her, "You are no longer welcome in this pool." Catherine was shaken as she packed up pool toys and sun block and led Marci, Stacy, and her four crying children to the parking lot and back home.

Catherine told her husband, who later that afternoon went to the police station to report the incident. He was told that, absent a crime, the police could do nothing to help him. He'd called a lawyer, even e-mailed the ACLU. Ultimately, though, the Russos put the decision to pursue justice in Shepard's hands. And Shepard, on the verge of her senior year, with her father's death still fresh in her memory, wasn't ready. The Russos also were reluctant to do anything that might besmirch the image of the town where Catherine had grown up and where they were happily raising their children. "I didn't want outsiders painting a picture of Nutley that was inaccurate," Russo says now.

But now, with the Giordanos' story on the ten o'clock news, Catherine called UPN, who passed along her name to the couple. Not long after, the Russos went public. At that point, neither family had a plan other than to make sure their now intertwining stories got told. They had no sense that things might go further until the ACLU and the state civil rights office approached them.

Roughly six weeks after the Giordanos went public with their dispute, Philip Giordano, Michael Russo, Marci Shepherd, and Ed Barocas, legal director of the ACLU of New Jersey, appeared on Connie Chung Tonight on CNN. They recounted their similar stories, right down to the Nardones' banishment of the families from the club, with full refunds.

The plaintiffs in the ACLU suit, which is proceeding in state Superior Court, include Phyllis Kropp, a Nutley resident who claims her adopted daughter, Nicole, was barred entrance to Le Terrace because of the color of her skin. The ACLU suit seeks to prevent future bias at the club and asks for damages "for pain, suffering, and humiliation" on behalf of the plaintiffs.

The state's suit also had named Tonya Philips, an African-American woman who says her son was denied admission to a party at Le Terrace. The state's initial attempt to notify the Nardones of the suit was delayed when its first process server, who is African-American, was barred from delivering the legal documents at Le Terrace. The next process server, who is white, gained access to Nardone at the club.

Both suits relied on a longstanding state statute barring discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, or ancestry in places of "public accommodation." The statute does allow an exception, says Barocas, for "distinctly private organizations." But he and lead counsel Anne McHugh contended that Le Terrace wasn't a private club. "A business cannot slap the term club onto their name in order to circumvent the discrimination laws of our state," Barocas says.

"This agreement is important because it provides, in time for the 2003 pool season, both an acknowledgment by Le Terrace of its obligations under the law, and various accountability and awareness measures to make certain the club meets those obligations," says J. Frank Vespa-Papaleo, director of the state Division on Civil Rights, of the mediation of the division's suit. "The most gratifying issue through this mediated settlement is the timing. If we went to trial, we were confident that we would win, but it would likely have not been resolved in time for even the 2004 season." The division's argument against the club's claims that it was a truly private entity centered on two issues: how it was governed and how it solicited members. Whereas its members or their representatives run a strictly private club, owners generally run a public accommodation. Public accommodations solicit patrons through advertising; Le Terrace, as the ACLU legal complaint points out, has advertised in the Essex County Yellow Pages.

As Gardiner prepares for the ACLU suit, she says, "All the allegations were completely fabricated. At the end, Nutley and all of New Jersey will understand the allegations are incorrect. There were other motivations here. Was the party cancelled for the reasons Annmarie Giordano says it was? No. It was a dispute over the time of the party."

"What is she going to say about all the other people who came forward?" asks Phil Giordano. "The Nardones got off easy. He just [has to pay] $25,000? The other sanctions don't matter now that he doesn't own the club. We are more prepared than ever to see the ACLU suit through to the end."

VESPA-PAPALEO POINTS OUT that it was the very issue of discrimination in a public accommodation that sparked the American Civil Rights movement nearly half a century ago.  He has more than a passing legal connection to the case.  Now living in Glen ridge, he grew up in Nutley, played ball on its fields, and attended its schools.  Vespa-Papaleo says he was driven to pursue the suit by his memories of the late John Walker, and African-American who was the widely admired Nutley School District’s assistant superintendent and who was his mentor as his principal at Yantacaw Elementary School.  “If he were alive today,” Vespa-Papaleo says, “I say he would be very upset about these kinds of allegations.  He tried to educate people about them.”

In a town that often feels smaller then it is, the controversy has caused some friction among residents.  A former Le Terrace member who decided not to renew this year and who asks that her name not be used says she felt increasingly uncomfortable in social situations last summer when it became known she belonged to the club. “People assumed that because you belonged, you endorsed the owner’s policies,” she says.  Amy Williamson, on the other hand, wishes she’d experienced a little more friction.  She and her husband, Jim, Nutley residents and members of Le Terrace since 2001, withdrew from the club last summer because, Amy says, “we didn’t want our kids to grow up knowing that Mommy and Daddy had accepted that kind of attitude.”  She’d expected any member of responses to her decision, except for the response she usually got. “People really didn’t understand why we’d quit,” she says. “They felt that (Nardone) was old and set in his ways, raised in a different generation, and you had to turn a blind eye.  I was taken back.”

In fact, responses to the allegations among members and the general population have been mixed.  One longtime Nutley resident, who grew up in nearby Montclair and who also asks not to be named, decided to maintain her membership for the same reasons she initially joined the club: “I wanted my kids to have a place to swim that was safe, clean, and close.”  She’d heard the rumors about past bias incidents and found them “disconcerting.”  “But I always felt that my views were not the owner’s views,” she says.

The Giordanos say their friends and neighbors in Bloomfield have been almost universally supportive of their decision to go public and to sue.  The Russos, who still have some friends who remain Le Terrace members, say the response has been split down the middle.  “Fifty percent has been phenomenal, supportive,” Michael Russo says, while the other half hasn’t been so much negative as “silent.”  “You have to assume, because of their silence, that they’ll continue to go to this pool club if it’s available to them,” says his wife.

As this story went to press, the message on the Le Terrace machine refers members and prospective members to the Belleville phone number of the new owners.  And while all parties admit the club’s name has changed, all of New Jersey Monthly’s requests to speak to the new owners or even to get their names were denied by a woman answering their phones.  The woman says that membership applications are being accepted, that there is no official opening date, and that existing members will be notified of when the season is to begin.  Some Nutley officials who ask not to be identified say the sale is complete.  An official in the township assessor’s department, however, says the office is still awaiting the official property transfer due to a township paperwork backlog that has prevented all 2003 residential and commercial property transfers from being officially included in the assessor’s files.  Nardone refuses to comment about the suits or the sale of the club.  Gardiner denies any knowledge of the sale, but when pressed for an answer,, she says that if the Nardones were to sell, it would be “because they’re in their seventies.”

While people may or may not agree with the plaintiffs and their decision to come forward, there can be no doubt about its impact.  As proof, Philip Giordano holds up a sheet of paper with the names and phone numbers of others who have come forward, not just to offer support but to tell similar stories, some of them going back decades.  They include Lorraine Crosby, a Bloomfield resident who met with Patrick Nardone two years ago to inquire about membership.  That day, she says, Nardone pulled out an album filled with photographs of past and present members.  Crosby, whose fiancé (now her husband) was African-American, was struck immediately by the absence of people of color in the photos.  “I said to him, given that I was engaged to an African-American, I noticed there were no minorities,” she says.  “And he said, ‘Oh, they don’t feel comfortable here.’  And then he told me that there were no openings anyway.”  She says she decided not to take any action against Nardone, “because it was a one-on-one conversation.  He could say I misinterpreted it.”  She suspects there are others who made similar decisions, “until the Giordanos broke the story, and the floodgates opened.”

According to Vespa-Papaleo, the Division on Civil Rights has received complaints about other clubs, but almost all of these have dealt with alleged discrimination against employees, not members.  “I’m not sure why we don’t have more of these kinds of complaints,” he says.  “I would hope it’s because this kind of discrimination doesn’t go on elsewhere.”  He did say that there have been some reports of possible discriminatory infractions at other pool clubs in the state, claims he says his office plans to investigate.

Phil Giordano is looking forward to the next trial.  “I try to be a good Christian man and I know I shouldn’t be vindictive,” he says, “but I want the trial to bring everything out.  And when we win, I’ll be like a baseball player who just hit one over the fence.  I know I shouldn’t go into a home-run trot, but when I cross home plate, I will sit in the dugout and light up a big cigar.”

Marci Shepard has a far more simple goal.  “What year are we in?” she asks.  “It seems we’re back in the1960s.  Did we come so far, and now we’re going back in time again?  I just want it to stop.”

Contributing editor Leslie Garisto Pfaff wrote about Tom Moran of the State Council on the Arts in March.