Holyoke Grand Colleen Elizabeth Gourde waves to the crowd during the 2024 Holyoke St. Patrick’s Parade.
Reminder Publishing file photo
HOLYOKE — It started the way so many great things have begun. With an idea, and some willing hands.
Or at least, that’s what the newspaper clipping from the time say about the origin of what we now call the Holyoke St. Patrick’s parade.
“When you go back, there’s not a lot of history that was captured,” Russell McNiff Sr., 2005 Parade Grand Marshall, two-time parade president and longtime parade committee member, told Reminder Publishing.” It’s hard to weed out what is legend and what is reality.”
Humble beginnings
McNiff shared that newspaper accounts from the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram credit a group of men, comprised of individuals from the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the John Boyle O’Reilly Club — along with members of the Holyoke Police and Fire departments, with planning the inaugural parade. The year was 1952 — and with a $300 donation from Jeremiah H. Lawler and a “pass the hat” donation drive amongst the original parade organizers, the first community celebration of St. Patrick’s Day took place in Holyoke.
And for those first few years, it was the Irish clubs, and the Holyoke Police and Fire departments that comprised much of the organizing committee, and the parade participants.
“I remember as a young boy, my father was a firefighter, and the Fire Department marched in it,” McNiff recalled. “The weather was not pleasant” he added, reminiscing about those early parades.
The Holyoke High School band and the Holyoke Caledonian Pipes and Drums have also been with the parade since the early days, according to McNiff. And the parade has had a grand marshal since its inception, the first being “Tom Rowan, a probation officer in Holyoke and one of the [parade’s] founding fathers,” McNiff said. Criteria for selection of the grand marshal have always included that the person must be “a member of the community, reside in Holyoke and be of Irish ancestry,” and “until 1987, they were exclusively male,” McNiff said.
An official organization
After three years as an informal group, in 1955 the parade committee became an official body when the commonwealth of Massachusetts issued a charter for the St. Patrick’s Parade Committee of Holyoke, Inc.
The year 1955 also saw the first selection of a grand colleen to reign over the parade. The first young woman selected to wear the crown was an Irish immigrant, who became a U.S. citizen the Friday after the parade. For the first few years, McNiff said the colleen was selected by public ballot, with the nomination form printed in the Holyoke Transcript Telegram.
“It was havoc for the people because people were having their papers stolen where the carriers picked up their bundles,” McNiff, who was in “fifth or sixth grade” that year, recalled. “The ballot was on page two, and people were ripping the front pages off the papers” to promote their favorite candidates. He remembered bringing his family’s ballot into school to submit it.
“Shortly thereafter, it became a pageant,” McNiff said of the colleen selection process, which now includes a panel of judges and both scholarship awards and a trip to Ireland for the grand colleen.
Over the years other cities and towns also began to select colleens to represent their communities in the parade. Today, Agawam, Chicopee, Springfield, West Springfield and Westfield all have pageants to select a colleen and her court to appear in the annual parade.
McNiff said that in the early years, the local Catholic churches and Catholic schools were heavily involved with the parade. He could recall working on a parade float while a communicant at Blessed Sacrament Church in his youth. “We made carnations out of tissue paper and bobby pins and put them on the float” for one year’s parade, he explained.
In the 1950s and 60s a number of local “corporate giants” with ties to the community were also parade supporters and sponsors, including “Lestoil, National Pad and Paper, the Kramer Brothers” and others, McNiff said. “It was very ecumenical, they weren’t all Irish Catholics,”
McNiff also said of the broad support the annual celebration of Irish heritage garnered in the community, noting that an episcopal minister marched in one of the early parades and that Holyoke had a Jewish mayor in the 1960s who was “very supportive” of the parade.
“Our logo — God, Country, Heritage, Service — says we embrace everybody,” McNiff added.
John F. Kennedy and the parade
The late 1950s saw the reputation of the parade rise to a new level with the addition of a prestigious award, originally called the Outstanding Irish American Award, in 1958. The first recipient was Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, who was poised for a run for the White House.
“It was first offered to his father, Joseph Kennedy, who was ambassador to England,” McNiff shared. “He suggested we give it to his son, the then-Sen. Kennedy.” A member of the Holyoke High School band in 1958, McNiff said he “remembers marching down to City Hall because the award was presented on a platform outside it. That’s when I first got interested in the parade,” McNiff shared. He officially joined the parade committee in 1967 and has been involved in numerous capacities ever since.
McNiff added it was John Kennedy who urged the parade committee to move the word “American” up in the title, to make it “Outstanding American of Irish Ancestry,” which is what the award was called until Kennedy’s assassination in 1964.
“When the assassination took place, the name was changed to the John F, Kennedy Award to honor the fallen president,” McNiff added. Over the years notable recipients have included actress Maureen O’Hara, authors Tom Clancy and David McCullough, first director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, astronaut Catherine “Cady” Coleman and Cardinal Richard Cushing.
Strike up the bands
Music, of course, has always been a big part of the Holyoke St. Patrick’s parade, and McNiff said in the early days the parade relied on local groups to help provide this vital element. McNiff said that through the 196s and into the early 70s, the high school bands from surrounding communities were big participants in the parade.
“We had the Holyoke High School band, two bands from Chicopee, a band from South Hadley, and bands from surrounding communities,” McNiff said. As the participation in high school music programming has dwindled, so have the size and number of local bands participating annually, he added.
In 1967, through the generosity of Richard “Pat” Paradis, co-owner of Pat’s Supermarket, the parade added its first national musical act.
“He gave us $1,000 to bring the Mummers [of Philadelphia] in,” McNiff said.
That began what McNiff said is now an annual association with the musical group, with the 2024 parade having “three to four” different Mummers groups performing.
It also began the musical budget for the annual parade. McNiff said when he served a stint as parade treasurer in the 1970s, the musical budget was about $20,000 with a total parade expense budget of about “$50,000… and you hoped you had a bit left over for the next year. Now it’s half a million.”
The musical units have grown beyond the Mummers and local bands over the years to include participating groups from New York City, Brooklyn, New York, Waterbury, Torrington, Branford, Chester, Granby, Seymour and Enfield, Connecticut, Prinecton New Jersey, and Worcester and Cambridge in eastern Massachusetts. Before travel costs became too high, McNiff said that bands from Ireland and Canada had also participated in the Holyoke parade.
Another popular group that joined the annual parade in the 1970s was units from the local branch of the Shriners International, the Melha Temple.
“Since 1973 the Melha Temple Shriners have joined [the parade] and thrilled the crowds with their spirited vehicles and music,” McNiff noted.
Racing towards notoriety
The 1970s also saw the addition of an event – and fundraiser- that’s become almost as popular as the parade itself – the Holyoke St. Patrick’s 10K Road Race. The inaugural race – which attracted a mere 200 runners in 1976 – has grown into a premiere event with thousands of runners competing annually for cash prizes – and bragging rights. Now the largest road race in Western New England, it can boast early support by famed multi-marathon winner Bill Rodgers and 1972 Olympic gold medal marathoner Frank Shorter, who both competed in the race (Rodges winning the first three) which helped galvanize the event’s status.
The road race is now joined by an annual calendar of events that lead up to — and close out — the parade, including an annual celebrity bartending night, a Holyoke St. Patrick’s tartan party, concerts, Chicopee, South Hadley and St. Jerome Irish Nights, the Marshal and Brennan Awards reception, a JFK award reception, the Ambassador’s Award Breakfast and the post-race and parade party at the Springfield Thunderbirds.
The awards that are now an integral part of the lead-up to the parade McNiff noted, have been added as the parade itself grew over the years. When he was parade president in 1992- his second stint in that chair – McNiff said he charged a parade subcommittee with exploring a way to better connect the parade committee with Ireland. As a result, the Ambassador of the Republic of Ireland established the Ambassador’s Medal – which recognizes a person or organization that promotes the relationship between the people of both Ireland and the United States.
Thank you Channel 22
McNiff credited the early — and ongoing — popularity of the Holyoke parade to the support of Bill Putnam and his TV station, Channel 22 News, which began televising the parade in 1959.
“It broadened our exposure throughout Western Massachusetts,” McNiff noted.
Though the coverage — both a television broadcast and live streaming of the event — moved to the local PBS affiliate, WGBY for a few years in the 2000s, as of 2024 Channel 22 has returned to broadcasting the parade on 22.2, the CW Springfield, renewing a longstanding relationship between local television and the parade.
Putnam also worked with then Bishop Joseph Weldon to televise the presentation of the Outstanding American of Irish Descent award during a parade Mass at Holyoke’s St. Jerome’s Church the night before the parade, another media event that helped spotlight the parade for many years.
A ‘Legacy’ and a tartan
The turn of the millennial was a momentous year for the Holyoke St. Patrick’s parade, as in 2000, on the 200th anniversary of the Library of Congress, that auspicious body named the parade a “Local Legacy,’ the same honor bestowed on New Orleans Mardi Gras, the Tournament of Roses Parade, the Daytona 500, Mount Rushmore and other prestigious landmarks and events.
In 2002, the latest symbol of the parade was born, with the unveiling of the Holyoke St. Patrick’s Tartan. Designed by parade past president and 2011 Grand Marshall Gerald Healy and Ralf J. Hartwell, Jr., the pattern combines the colors of the American flag, the Irish Flag and those of notable Holyoke institutions — Holyoke, Holyoke Catholic and Dean Vocational high schools and Holyoke Community College. The tartan is internationally registered under certificate number 5772.
Nearly three-quarters of a century
This year marks the 73rd year of planning for the Holyoke St. Patrick’s parade — though the COVID-19 pandemic did pause the actual parade for two years in 2020 and 2021 — and it has come a long way from those early years, according to McNiff.
What started out as a small community project is now recognized as one of the largest St. Patrick’s parades in the Northeast, an event that, according to the St. Patrick’s Parade website, now draws as many as 400,000 people to Holyoke from all over the U.S. for the festivities, creating an economic impact of $20 million annually.
