Pearl River has been the venue for the Saint Patrick Day Parade since 1967 when the parade was moved from the narrow streets of New City to the wide main thoroughfare of Central Avenue. Raymond Sheridan was the parade’s first Grand Marshall in 1964. Since that time, the parade has grown to become the second largest parade in New York State next to the NYC affair. Tens of thousands of spectators crowd the sidewalks each year to see a panorama of marching bands, school children, first responders from all over the tri-state area, and floats. The parade is both a celebration of Irish heritage and religious celebration of the Catholic feast of Saint Patrick who supposedly drove the snakes out of Ireland. Much revenue is generated during the parade. Storekeepers are open to serve the visiting public food and drink. It is said that the local businesses can pay the previous years bills in one day of operation. The route starts at the Pfizer parking lot on Crooked Hill Road as it has for many years and winds its way along Middletown Road and turns west onto Central Avenue where it ends at Pearl Street. Politics has always been a facet of the parade with those protesting English rule of Northern Ireland. I remember individuals marching as prisoners who had been held in Maze Prison, wrapped in blankets and disheveled long hair. The Wye River Accords and the ending of the troubles as it has been called. There was the year when the previous year this country was attacked on September 11th 2001 and many brave Irish – American first responders lost their lives saving victims who lost their lives to the evil and cowardice of terrorists, my friends among them. The pain of having an alleged terrorist pushed in a wheelchair in the parade, was too much for the women married to cops and firemen all who suffered the horror of that day. They turned their backs to him en masse. It was a brave and strong act of protest against the new enemy of our age, The Terrorist. Another terrorist emerged in 2022 when a virus had kept all of humanity in isolation.Covid -19 resulted in the cancellation of the parade that year at the orders of Governor Mario Cumo to stop viral transmission.
Aside from the occasional politics the parade has been good for the town economically, it instills ethnic pride in the young, and shows the world that there is nothing as good for a community as a stirring good old American parade, regardless of who is marching.
