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250 years of celebration - New York City's St. Patrick's Day Parade

CAHIR O'DOHERTY,

Irish Voice Reporter

Published Friday, March 18, 2011, 1:15 PM

Updated Friday, March 18, 2011, 1:15 PM

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McConnell says he was surprised to learn the parade has almost always been controversial. “When you think this parade began 14 years before this country became a nation, 14 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, they were having a Saint Patrick’s Day celebration, it’s astounding. In a new biography of George Washington they mention how he walks up Fifth Avenue and bumps into a crowd of Irishmen marching in the parade. We’ve been here since before the country was a nation.”

The most longstanding (and for the younger generation, perhaps the most galling) controversy surrounding the parade is its continuing exclusion of Irish gay groups from being allowed to march under their own banners. The standoff, which was highly contentious and almost shut the parade down, resulted in a Supreme Court ruling and a stalemate that harms Irish America’s reputation every March 17, critics contend.

“The parade has always had controversy. In Ireland there’s an old saying that it’s the row that matters. It’s a real indicator of the parade’s Irishness that it can row.”

Mary Higgins Clark, the 2011 Grand Marshall and an ardent promoter of the new book told the Irish Voice that the greatest surprise of her professional career was being asked to Grand Marshall in the first place.

“I received a call from John Fitzsimons who asked me if I would come to dinner. He said you’re going to be invited to be the Grand Marshall of the parade. I almost dropped the phone. It no more occurred to me – ever – that I would be invited. It wasn’t one of my secret wishes, it wasn’t a case of if a dream came true – it literally never occurred to me that I would be invited to do it.”

Higgins Clark has happy memories of the parade down the years and so the decision to say yes came quickly. “My own memories of the parade involve the wonderful bands and the bagpipes and all those schools marching. And the spirit of it – rain or shine, hot or cold, the spirit of the thing was so joyous.”
McConnell adds that her selection was a savvy one because of what she represents to her 80 million readers: resourcefulness, smarts and grace under pressure. Modest as ever, Higgins Clarks demurs the accolades. Courage in the face of adversity is an Irish tradition, she says.

“The old Irish said goodbye to their children and didn’t see them again. So many of them buried children. My husband’s grandmother had 13 children. Four lived. It was said once that it was safer to be a soldier in the trenches than a baby in New York because the care wasn’t as good.”

The Irish has a sense of humor that never fails them no matter what she adds, and that sustains her. “My brother-in-law was only buried a week ago and we were great pals. He was my younger brothers best friend since they were five – so he was brother not brother-in-law. On the day he died his wife give him a little malt whiskey and asked him how did that taste Ken? He replied “like shit.” His final words. Don’t you love it? Right to the every end the wit and the humor is terrific.”

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jacersagain | Mar 24, 2011, 05:53 PM EDT

Sorry for coming back again so soon, not wishing to impose on others’ posting space but I’d like to draw attention to my posts under another ICentral topic of the 3rd of March last “First ever openly gay members elected to Irish Parliament” – where (Mar 5th, 01.52am) I posted quotes from the Bible amongst my other comments on that topic and by which I made sincere certain calls upon LGBT people to do what is right.

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jacersagain | Mar 24, 2011, 05:23 PM EDT

@ eiriamach - 23rd, 6.43am – a well-written response but I feel it doesn’t address the core issue here: that the organisers of this long established and exceptionally famous St. Patrick’s Day Parade – 250 years old and still marvellously going strong in NYC - are entitled to invite whichever groups that they feel represent the ethos of the occasion. I would not ever be against LGBT people participating so long as they don’t use the occasion to flaunt their bedroom lifestyles. That’s not what the Parade is about. It’s about being Irish and celebrating Irish culture, of which the LGBT brigade’s policies are not part of. >>> Waylaying the above ‘250th’ topic as you have though, you are right in a way in saying Christ never condemned homosexuals – but then, he did condemn those who abuse children and the young – and that is upon whom most homosexuals begin their perverted ‘indoctrination’ of future homosexuals. Again I say, there is no greater authority than the Word of God – our Bible – to show why homosexuality is abnormal, against the law of nature and therefore against the Law of God, Christ’s Father. No opinions written by anyone – by you, Webster, Joyce, Yeats, Behan, me or any others – can ever over-ride it. Anyone who tries to, or persuades others to over-ride that Authority, might be one of those (not excluding myself, in “other matters”!) who need that “very long spoon”.

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jacersagain | Mar 24, 2011, 04:44 PM EDT

@ eiriamach Mar 22, 10.24am - No worries eiriamach re posts not making it online or being deleted after a day or two... it happens a lot and only ICentral’s IT or Editorial staff can explain that. I doubt they will but I think all ICentral posters deserve an explanation. IC has opened their site to comments, actively encourage posts and most of us do make something of an effort to contribute to the site and debates. It is disturbing and pretty much annoying when posts don’t appear after the effort and time that posters put in to write out a considered comment before posting. What about it, Niall? – An explanation - please?

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eiriamach | Mar 23, 2011, 06:41 AM EDT

Jacers, I think it was Daniel Webster who said, "When you go to have supper with the Devil, you'd better bring a very long spoon." Perhaps you think that you can limit your "appropriate deliberate discrimination," as you call it, to homosexuals, but it is not likely that you can. In any case, the church's political pogrom against gays in this part of the US has given many a license for bigotry that they extend beyond the gays to others: Muslims, blacks, Jews, "lib" women, immigrants, etc. I'm sure you have seen the diatribes in postings on IC. Recently, I received an email from the folks who run the meetup groups; they asked me to start an Irish group, and they listed almost 80 people who've registered an interest in having such a group. On the list is one who is already a member of an Irish language group that meets at one of the NYC centers; he wrote this bio: "I do not like liberals, they live in a bubble. I like my own, ethnically white w/no brown mixed in. PERIOD. I live in reality. A liberal cannot c how Sweden, France, Amsterdam have been destroyed by darkies, or much else in reality. GOT IT. ..." He is typical of a few people whom I dealt with for a couple of years as I was trying to learn Irish at the various language events-- all of them Catholics, and NO ONE except me willing to call them on their bigotry. No, there is no spoon long enough to distance you from that Devil once you support the church's "deliberate discrimination." Christ never condemned homosexuals; the men of the church have a far different reason for driving out the gays and the feminists. More about that another time.

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eiriamach | Mar 22, 2011, 10:24 AM EDT

There's more to consider on this topic, Jacersagain, but for some reason that I do not understand, my postings are not going through (and it's not because they are too long).

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jacersagain | Mar 21, 2011, 07:06 PM EDT

@ eiriamach on Mar 19, at 10.01pm – My sole basis for appropriate deliberate discrimination against the activities of LGBT people are the advices given in the Bible. Forgive the sinner, we all say, only God can forgive the sin. Anyone who flaunts in the face of the Bible’s words, or anyone who encourages pro-LGBT agenda, does so in assumption of knowing better than God.

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eiriamach | Mar 19, 2011, 12:57 PM EDT

Fortunately for everyone, I need to reply quickly to Searlit's question--no time today to write a l o n g one. The Catholic establishment, in the form of the Archdiocese of NY, has systematically and expensively fought to keep laws that would protect the civil rights of LGBTs from passing in the legislature. Gaelic societies and civil groups march under their own banners; marching under their own banner would represent acceptance of who they are for the LGBTs. This is my own assessment of the matter, not having talked politics with the groups myself. Others could give a better reply, I'm sure.

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Searlit | Mar 19, 2011, 11:52 AM EDT

eiriamach, I have great respect for your opinions. I don't understand why LGBTs, insist on marching under a different banner. If the goal is to be treated equally, why is there an insistence on carrying a banner to make themselves stand-out? LGBTs aren't banned from participating in the parade.

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cillowen | Mar 19, 2011, 09:47 AM EDT

250 or more and shussed to being dacent to ridicular tribe member with balls of brass knowing he being a reporter to a higher authority.

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maloney | Mar 19, 2011, 12:18 AM EDT

Delete away but it still doesn't change the fact that America does not want to see gays arse cheeks in the parade, plain and simple.

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eiriamach | Mar 18, 2011, 10:01 PM EDT

Jacers, at some point, one caves in or gets steamrolled by history. I believe in eternal truths also, but there's no "truth" in discrimination against LGBTs, and it's past time to give it up and do what we all know is right. I wonder what James Joyce would say about the parade? Oh, forget I asked. We know what he'd say. But Catholics have been forbidden to listen to the truth of the poets. Joyce would be driven out of the parade (as were Mike Quill, Brendan Behan, Frank McCourt, and other as-Irish-as-it-gets people). Joyce had the audacity to question in the smithy of his soul the humanity of Jesus and the infallibility of popes, but not the pleasures of sex! The prudish parade organizers would arrange for a fiery cloud of divine vengeance to descend upon any uninvited marchers, particularly LGBTs, Wiccans, Joyceans and their likes, who dared to show themselves in front of St. Pat's Cathedral on March 17. As the marchers burned to a crisp and the shrieking onlookers fled to Rockefeller Center and hovered under the shadow of the naked golden pagan Prometheus, floating before a wall of red Balmoral granite, from out of the fiery cloud would come a voice like Charleton Heston's intoning, "My people have made an abomination in my sight," or maybe "an Obama nation in my sight" (it's all the same to neo-cons, isn't it?). And divine wrath would descend on the libs and gays to the everlasting delight of Beck, O'Hannity, O'Reilly, O'Ben XVI and his churchmen, "Because the church is cruel like all old sinners," and didn't Joyce know all about that too ("A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man").

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jacersagain | Mar 18, 2011, 08:12 PM EDT

Eiriamach.. I respect your learned posts greatly but on this one you’ve made a bollix of making your case (pls pardon the distinctly angry Irish expression). The Irish are much stronger in Truth than to cave into popular views, like your posts are sometimes, and which will die out in time. They know what Truth is and know it will remain whatever the future may bring. Go mbeidgh Dia leat i do phostai.

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FallsRNat | Mar 18, 2011, 07:55 PM EDT

Its a good article, though in today's historical context, i cannot think of 1 of the 26 counties where the bands play the pipes, this is true only of the ulster & scots bands which of course u are right wouldn't be welcome in the parade. Ireland hasn't moved on & never will

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eiriamach | Mar 18, 2011, 02:35 PM EDT

The original marchers were Irish soldiers who had served in the British army. They walked from their Catholic churches to the original St Patrick's Cathedral in an area that is now lower Manhattan. After the Civil War, when the new St. Patrick's Cathedral was completed with financial help from Irish nationals, the parade began in midtown, moving alongside Central Park for some of its lengthy route. Not until 1918 did the Ancient Order of Hibernians, who run the parade, extend the first invitation to "women's organizations" to march! Malachi McCourt writes that earlier parades were more colorful, less sober, and less well behaved than recently. Floats and banners of all kinds were on display. Yesterday, as I watched the parade on 5th Ave, it seemed to me that the deep green's gone out of it. It's pastels now, glitzy shamrock necklaces and over-sized fuzz hats. The county associations still have the spirit, and the marching bands with pipes or fifes were in bright colors and fine fettle, but there were more military uniforms than Irish association members. I saw only one Roman collar among the marchers. Although Catholics still claim the parade as their own, the only Catholics appearing as such are the high schoolers in uniform, and some seemed not happy to be there despite the great weather. Could embarrassment over Catholic anti-gay lobbying in NY be causing the decline? The parade has had a noble history, but before it dies altogether, the AOH should turn over the reins to an inclusive group, like the Irish American Historical Society, or some other non-sectarian, non-partisan group more representative of Irish NYC. It's time for a change.

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