NEW YORK (AP) — People across the United States celebrated Irish heritage in several major St. Patrick’s Day parades. Patrick on Saturday, marking the holiday a day earlier at events that included a major anniversary in Savannah, Georgia, and honored a pioneering female business leader as New York’s grand marshal.
The holiday memories Patron saint of Ireland and popularized largely by Irish Catholic immigrants. While St. Patrick’s Day falls on March 17, some parades have been moved from Sunday, a day of worship for Christian believers.
St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattanwhich dates back to 1762 — 14 years before the US Declaration of Independence — is one of the largest celebrations of Irish heritage in the world.
Megan Stransky of Houston and two relatives planned a Broadway weekend to coincide with the parade, seeing it as an excellent opportunity to remember her family’s Irish roots and the traditions that helped shape their upbringing.
The event did not disappoint.
“It doesn’t compare to any other parade or city I’ve been to,” marveled Stransky as he surveyed the pipers, bands, police and military contingents and more.
The grand marshal, Irish-born Heineken USA CEO Maggie Timoney, is the first female CEO of a major American beer company. At a pre-parade reception at the New York City Mayor’s residence, Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee welcomed the recognition for Timoney and noted some other reasons to celebrate Irish-American ties this year, including an Irish actor Cillian Murphy’s Best Actor Oscar won last weekend.
New York has multiple parades on various dates around its five boroughs — including Sunday’s first St. Patrick’s Day parade, which allows LGBTQ+ groups to march on Staten Island.
Mayor Eric Adams last month announced the plan for the new, privately held celebration, organized after a local organization wanted for years to join the neighborhood’s decade-old parade. This long-standing event, which prevents groups from marching under LGBTQ+ flags, happened earlier this month.
The Manhattan parade began allowing LGBTQ+ groups and symbols in 2015, after decades of protests, legal challenges and boycotts by some politicians.
Before the parade in Chicago, thousands of people – many dressed in green with beers in hand – gathered along the Chicago River to watch the local plumbers’ union boats color the water green. Organizers say the union-started tradition uses an environmentally friendly powder once used to check pipes for leaks.
Katie and Ryan Fox of suburban Mount Pleasant landed on a tour boat and saw one of the union boats spraying the paint in front of them.
Ryan Fox, 37, said seeing the river painted with a boat was one of the things on his bucket list.
“If there’s a city that does it better than Chicago, I’d like to see it,” he said.
Large, green-clad crowds also lined the streets of Savannah for bicentennial of the parade which began with a few dozen Irish immigrants in 1824. It is now one of the South’s major annual events, so much so that the Savannah area had nearly 18,000 hotel rooms booked for the weekend.
Other communities added their own flavor to the St. Patrick’s Day festivities. Patrick.
In Oklahoma City, hundreds lined the streets of Stockyard City — the nation’s largest operation — for a parade featuring longhorn cattle, clowns and a man dressed as St. Patrick. The grand marshal was Anita Swift, granddaughter of American film legend John Wayne.
In San Francisco, revelers dressed in dark green T-shirts and lime green feather boas watched bands, boats and buses in the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. Patrick. The event called for unity and aimed to bring together different cultural groups with dance, music and food.
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This story has been corrected to show that the St. Patrick in Manhattan began allowing LGBTQ+ groups to march under their own flags in 2015, not 2014, and that the new Staten Island parade allowing such contingents is set to take place on Sunday instead to have happened in February. The story has been edited to clarify that Timony is the CEO of Heineken in the US.
