The Pigeon Guys: Recollections of Vinnie Torre and Lynne Earing

The Hoboken Oral History Project, a joint project of the Hoboken Historical Museum and the Friends of the Hoboken Library, is pleased to announce the release of its twentieth oral history chapbook, The Pigeon Guys: Recollections of Vinnie Torre and Lynne Earing, on Sunday, March 14, 2010. Please join us at the Museum, 1301 Hudson Street, at 4 p.m., for a free event, during which copies of the chapbook will be distributed, refreshments served, and stories told about Hoboken's pigeon flyers-past and present.

Vinnie Torre has been racing pigeons since the mid-1950s, when veteran “pigeon guys” passed along their skills, and occasionally their birds, to “the kid.” He couldn't have known it then, but he was learning the flyer's art during the sport's last strong years in a city that had once boasted hundreds of rooftop lofts.

Pigeon lofts remained plentiful in Hoboken through the late 60s, but in 1968, when urban renewal efforts brought the leveling of buildings on lower Hudson and River Streets to make way for the construction of the Marine View towers, many longtime flyers lost their coops. By the 1990s, declining interest in the sport caused Hoboken's longstanding Hudson County Pigeon Club on Newark Street to cease operations. (In 2008, Vinnie would spearhead its revival, and Club members, eager to share their history, raised funds to assist with the publication of The Pigeon Guys.)

During the local club's dormant years, Vinnie continued to raise and train birds at his “Hillside Loft,” and to enter and win races state- and nationwide. In the late 1990s, he met Lynne Earing, a Bayonne animal lover who was soon sharing his life and his enthusiasm for the sport. It did not take long for Vinnie to build “Lynne's Loft,” alongside his own.

Lisa Sartori interviewed Vinnie Torre and Lynne Earing on Vinnie's roof last Spring. The transcript of their interview, from which the chapbook was derived, has been deposited in the collections of the Hoboken Public Library and the Hoboken Historical Museum. Holly Metz edited the interview, Kevin McCloskey contributed drawings, Robert Foster added photographs, and Ann Marie Manca designed the chapbook. Please do visit the Museum on the 14th of March and celebrate its release with us.

Hoboken Historical Museum director Bob Foster (far left) and board president Carol Losos (far right) accept a generous $2,000 donation from three members of the Hudson County Homing Pigeon Club, (from left to right) John Baginski, Vinnie Torre and James Corso, at the club headquarters on Newark St. - - - Photo by club member Lynne Earing.