Former Federal Reserve Bank of Boston director and pillar of the Connecticut banking community David Lentini has died.

Lentini, former chairman and CEO for Connecticut Bank and Trust Co. and head of the Connecticut Advisory Board of Berkshire Bank, died Sunday at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, Conn. He was 66 years old and had made his home in West Hartford, Conn. since 1985.

"People in the banking industry in Connecticut woke up to a sad day on Monday," Lindsey Pitkin, chairman of the Connecticut Bankers’ Association, said. "Dave was a great community banker. He was extremely passionate about the industry and the consumers we served. To know Dave was to like Dave."

"Typically bankers are numbers people, but he was very much a people guy. He took it upon himself to improve the lives of the people around him," Connecticut Banking Commissioner Howard Pitkin recalled of Lentini.

"He was even good to the examiners when they were in there. Nobody ever minded being at one of David’s banks," Pitkin added.

Lentini began his career at the original Connecticut Bank and Trust Co., where he spent 21 years in various capacities. He left in 1986 to serve as senior vice president and head of operations at Northeast Savings Bank. In 1988, he started the Bank of South Windsor and became its first president in 1989. That institution grew past the $100 million mark in its first three years of operation.

In 1993, Lentini joined New England Bank in Windsor, Conn., then operating under a cease-and-desist from the FDIC, and led an intense 11-month effort to restore the bank to good health. Lentini’s efforts resulted in its successful sale to Webster Bank in 1999, where he then spent two years.

"The re-birth of CBT is a neat story, a bank that was closed in the tough times of the early 90s," Pinkham said.

Lentini, along with some colleagues, opened The Connecticut Bank & Trust in 2004. The original CBT had merged with the Bank of New England in the 1980s and then ran into trouble. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sold that entity to the now-defunct Boston-based Fleet Bank. Though Fleet Bank absorbed all the CBT branches, it didn’t protect the name, so Lentini, along with his co-founders, adopted it for their de novo bank.

Pinkham remarked, "He brought back the same spirit that CBT had when he first joined them right out of school."

In 2007, Lentini was named a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and served for five years there, three of those as audit committee chairman.

Lentini has served on the boards of the Connecticut Bankers Association and the Connecticut Community Bankers Association.

Lentini had a philanthropic side, too. He served as chairman of the Board of Renbrook School and as a director of St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center.

"You could call any banker in Connecticut, and they would have similar words for him, even his competitors," Pitkin summed up. "He was truly one of God’s own gentlemen."