During the fall of 1968, a small group of Chinese people in Mid-Hudson Valley started to form an association for sponsoring the coming Chinese New Year party. They put a few candidate names on a ballot along with proposed by-laws. The ballots were mailed to all the people they knew how to contact and asked them to vote for the officers, trustees, and to provide their approval of the proposed by-laws. After a count of the returned written ballots, Dr. Richard Chu was elected as the first President of MHCCA. John Lu as the Vice President and Prof. Chin as the Secretary. With the help of many others, they organized the first MHCCA Chinese New Year party which was held in February 1969 at the former IBM Country Club (Casperkill Country Club today). It was attended by over 350 people including children. They had a catered Chinese dinner from the Canton Chinese Restaurant (which was then on Main Street in Poughkeepsie) served in the field house. After the dinner, Dr. Chu delivered his inauguration speech, outlining his proposed activities for the coming year. It was a 10 minute talk followed by an entertaining program, of which  main part was ballroom dancing. It was a semi-formal affair with everyone dressed up as they might be for a wedding reception. It was a very happy and succesful event and the party lasted until midnight ......

Since then each year MHCCA will re-elect the board of MHCCA to serve the members for the following year.