Tanzi's is Gone, Long Live Harry Tanzi

I don't think I've missed more A than ten Dartmouth graduations in my life," says 91 year old Harry Tanzi. While he didn't attend Dartmouth and never worked for the College, Harry is as much a Hanover landmark as, say, Webster Hall, which he predates.

Today he's known as the Honorary Mayor of Hanover who rides in the Dartmouth Night parade. But to generations of alumni, Harry Tanzi meant Tanzi's store on Main Street, and Tanzi's meant beer. According to legend it was the largest beer distributor in New England but that's never been confirmed.

The Tanzi saga began when Harry's father Angelo started coming to Hanover from Lebanon with his horse-drawn fruit wagon in 1895. The family moved to Hanover with one-month-old Harry in 1897, and the senior Tanzi opened the grocery store which would remain at the same location for 71 years.The Tanzi children six boys and three girls became a familiar sight around Hanover, working in the store and at other jobs, selling newspapers, taking football tickets. Harry entered the business in 1919 and took over the store with brothers Charles and Leon when their father retired in 1927.

The end of Prohibition in 1933 brought beer back to Hanover and the Tanzis started delivering countless wooden, and later aluminum, kegs to the 23 fraternities then in existence. "A lot of people thought we were just a beer store," says Tanzi, but the business "was also the largest fruit and vegetable store in the area."

Harry Tanzi worked at the store until his official retirement in 1958 and continued to work part-time until the store closed in 1968. The business was sold and the building was eventually torn down, but Harry Tanzi is as busy as ever. He and his wife, Katherine, visit Florida each winter, but when he's in Hanover he spends his days fishing, reading, and speaking to groups at Rotary lunches, Lions clubs, and senior centers. Twice a week he meets for breakfast with his longtime Hanover peers. He's frequently invited to speak at reunions and hasn't missed making the rounds of reunion tents since the thirties.

Tanzi has an enormous supply of stories about the Dartmouth history he's witnessed. When he was seven years old in 1904, he remembers watching Dartmouth Hall burn, "right to the ground." It burned for a day and a half, he says. Tanzi knew many students by name and has stories about the famous among them. "When Rocky [Nelson Rockefeller '30] first came here in 1926, he asked me to cash a check for him. He said, 'My name is Nelson Rockefeller,' and I said, 'Well, mine's John Jacob Astor.'" A friendship developed and Tanzi says Rockefeller always stopped to say hello on post-graduation visits and then kicked off his New Hampshire campaign for the Presidency in front of the Tanzi store in 1963.

"I have a story for everything," says Harry Tanzi."I could go on forever." We hope he does.

Harry Tanzi revisits the site where he spent most of a lifetime.