St. Patrick’s Day Parade Marked by Good Cheer & Politics

The Saint Patrick’s Day Parade crowds might have been a little lighter than usual along Fifth Avenue due to the cold temperatures and blustery wind but the weather did not dampen the the event’s prevailing good cheer–or suppress its complicagted politics.

One of the more dramatic moments during the parade on March 17th came precisely at 1 p.m. when the 120,000 marchers halted all along the 1.5 mile route and faced south where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood to commemorate the 2,700 who died that day nearly 25 years ago with a moment of silence.

A lone piper from the FDNY Pipes & Drums began a slow, wailing tune of “Amazing Grace.” A rare sense of mid-town quiet enveloped the entire parade route from 44th Street to 79th Street.

Before that dramatic pause, there were many political intrigues as there always seem to be at Irish events.

The day kicked off with an early morning breakfast at Gracie Mansion in which Mayor Zohran Mamdani honored former Irish president Mary Robinson. He followed it up by attending the pre-parade Mass at the filled-to-capacity St. Patrick’s cathedral where he sat next to Robinson with Grand Marshall Bob McCann next to the former Irish president.

Then he marched up Fifth Avenue with the NYPD accompanied by Commissioner Jessica Tisch and newly appointed chief co-chaplain of the NYPD, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who remains a very popular figure in the New York Archdiocese.

Ireland for Palestine?

Mamdani, not a big fan of parades (though he did attend one for Chinese New Year), seemed to be trying to build bridges with the Catholic community. He had broken tradition when he skipped the induction ceremony for new Archbishop Ronald Hicks on Feb. 6, which rankled some Catholic New Yorkers.

At the breakfast, he linked Ireland’s long fight to be free from British rule to the situation in Palestine. He spoke at the breakfast and then released a video extolling the hundreds of years of struggle and included in his speech the ten IRA hunger strikers who fasted unto death in 1981. But he generated controversy in some circles when he likened the Irish struggle to the Palestinian struggle. “Who can better understand those who weep than those who have weeped,” he asked and extolled “the solidarity the Irish have shown with the downtrodden and forgotten” including the people of Palestine.

”It was on Irish soil the British empire first developed their colonial project,” he said.

”For those who have long cared about universal rights and the extension of them to Palestine, silence is nothing new,” he said. “For Palestinians are so often left to weep alone. Yet former president Robinson has never been silent.”

The remarks probably played well in Ireland, which has always been sympathetic to a two state Palestine with an Irish government sharply critical of Israel’s reaction in Gaza after the Oct. 7 massacre of Jews by Hamas. But it generated controversy at home.

Among the Irish-Americans

Archbishop Hicks who is seen as less conservative than his predecessor Cardinal Dolan, avoided commenting on the mayor’s remarks. “We’re both new. We’d doing the best we can,” he said. He gave a low key sermon in which he asked Irish-Americans–who had to battle for everything when they began arriving in the mid-19th century–to extend a helping hand to today’s migrants.

”Will we remember our own story?” he asked. “Will we welcome others as our brothers and sisters? Will we cast our nets widely just as Christ asked us to do?”

Hicks one flub was minor, when he said he wanted to welcome and thank the Grand Marshal, Bob “McKenna.” He quickly caught his mistake. “I’m at that age where I need my glasses... It’s Bob McCann.”

By the time City Council member Virginia Maloney, council speaker Julie Menin and Manhattan borough president Brad Hoylman-Sigal and others had reached the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where Hicks was greeting marchers, he had slipped off his purple bishop skull cap (only the cardinal can wear a red one) and replaced it with a bright green wool hat.

Hicks said he only visited Ireland once and “the Irish people were great.” And he said planned to celebrate the day “until the wee hours” the next morning March 18.

Council member Viriginia Maloney confided she’s heading up the Irish Caucus on the Council, taking up the mantle of her predecessor Keith Powers with a bi-partisan twist. “I’m the co-chair with Joanna Ariola,” said Maloney, referring to the Queens Republican who represents Ozone Park and part of the Rockaway Peninsula.

New York State Senator Brian Kavanagh, who is stepping down at the end of the year, told us he’s endorsed Assembly member Grace Lee as his successor.

Grand Marshall McCann, like Hicks, is not a born and raised New Yorker. He came to New York when began working on Wall Street, rising to head of wealth management at Merrill Lynch and then as chairman Americas of UBS. “I came her in 1982. I thought I’d stay for a year or two and ended up staying for over 42 years,” he told Straus News. “It changed my life.” And it was where he first became interested in Irish causes. He’s now chairman of the board of the Irish Arts Center.

Fifth Avenue Freeze Out & Warming Spirits at Langan’s

While the crowd of spectators was lighter than in past years, it was no less spirited.

”It’s our first time here,” said Suzie Walsh and Nicole McCann who arrived from England, but grew up on the Falls Road., in Belfast at a time when it was a flashpoint in the IRA’s clash with the British over who should rule the six counties in Northern Ireland. Asked which side they were on, they responded diplomatically: “the right side.”

Melisa McCourt, with a shamrock bouquet bonnet, said she flew in from Port St. Lucie, FL with her son ten-year-old son Christian and her sister-in-law Patti. Asked what he thought of the parade, Christian said, “It’s really cool.”

And of course there are pubs. At Langan’s on West 47th Street, Sean Duffy, a bagpiper with the Co. Tyrone Pipes & Drums said he was also celebrating his St. Patrick’s Day birthday with his brother John and longtime friend and fellow piper Kevin Clarke. “We’re the oldest pipe band in the northeast,” he said, as an early crowd began filling in at the saloon owned by Tipperary man Des O’Brien. “We came for an Irish breakfast.”

A key part of the parade is the banners and marchers of the 32 counties and one of the biggest contingents is always the one from County Kerry. Some of the young woman who had competed to be crowned the Rose of the Tralee, at the international talent show in Kerry which draws international participants from across the Irish diaspora filled out the Kerry ranks, which stretched over two city blocks.

The reigning New York Rose is Billie Cooper, who is working on her masters at Columbia University. She grew up in a small village in County Cavan but is currently residing in the East Village.[That might explain why the entire Rose contingent ended up in the The Laurels pub on East 14th Street the evening before the parade.]

The reigning Rose is Katelyn Cummins who grew up on a dairy farm on the Kilkenny/Laios border and is a third year apprentice electrician who hopes to purse an electrical engineering degree. “It’s my first time in New York” the 20-year-old star said as Straus News pulled up beside her on Fifth Ave. Not too surprisingly she said of the big parade: “It’s great.”