Sunnyside parade is big hit with young, old

So announced the balloon outside the Petunia children’s boutique on Skillman Avenue.

But the newest member of the community, born at 8 pounds 15 ounces, could not be present for the Sunnyside/Woodside St. Patrick’s parade that was assembling on Sunday outside the store. Nor could his parents, Petunia owner Jill Callan and husband Brian Callan, from Meath, who were busy looking after him and his older sister.

There was, nonetheless, no shortage of young people. About 150 members of the Shannon Gaels, for instance, added considerably to the spectacle with the club’s royal blue and gold, as did several contingents of Girl Scouts and Caroline Duggan’s dance troupe Keltic Dreams, who’d traveled from the Bronx.

“There are a lot more young people this year,” said Tom Abernethy, a Sunnyside father of two preschoolers, who was behind the banner of the Irish-language group An Slua Nua.

So relaxed was the atmosphere, 6-year-old Arianna Rose Jiménez, who was waiting with her parents for the parade to begin, could walk up to high-five Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Even those bringing a political message protested gently in the spirit of the day.

Debra Peetz of An Slua Nua said: “It’s more established and a lot more Irish than it was.” Like many who had marched each year since the first St. Pat’s For All Parade in 2000, Peetz couldn’t say definitely, so early in the afternoon, if it was the biggest yet; many offered, though, that it was definitely the best.

The mild weather certainly helped, as did the entertainment, whether Bolivian or Scottish in origin, or from anywhere in between.

There was a sense that the parade had established itself firmly in the mainstream Irish calendar. The cross section of community personalities that showed up seemed to attest to that.

Fr. Jim Morris, the chaplain of the Catholic gay group Dignity, declared from a platform crowded with elected representatives the significance of the presence of a “minister of the government of the Republic of Ireland.”

Indeed, Kathleen Lynch TD, whose policy areas of responsibility are disability, older people, equality and mental health, led from the front with organizers Brendan Fay and Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy, local Democratic leader Deirdre Feerick, and the 2012 grand marshals: novelist, essayist and historian Peter Quinn and Mary Brosnahan for the NYC Coalition for the Homeless.

“I’m from the Bronx, but I can’t dance like that,” said Grand Marshall Quinn about Keltic Dreams.

Ellen Duncan, who attends annually with her husband Ron, said that what Duggan had done to bring out the children’s natural talent was in the nurturing faith tradition of the nuns who had taught her when she was a child.

“It was wonderful this year,” she said. “The parade is so embracing of everybody’s humanity.”

Duncan, who grew up on the Irish border, praised Consul General Noel Kilkenny’s support and the fact that he and his wife Honora stayed with the parade for the entire afternoon.

Organizer Fay declared himself “more than happy” with how the day went and suggested that local businesses were also. Certainly, Saints & Sinners was packed to the rafters. Standing outside that Woodside establishment, Sunnyside resident and Shannon Gaels parent Fiona Finneran Smith said: “We did it last year. We enjoyed it so much, we came back this year with 14 musicians.”

Her friend Anne Kelly, a Maspeth resident, added. “It was fabulous. And the kids had a great time.”

The visiting minister of state was pleased, too.

“It is astonishing to me that you wouldn’t want this color, this enthusiasm, this variety and this vibrancy,” Lynch commented when it was all over.

“This is the sort of parade you would have at home in Cork or Galway,” added the minister, a Labour TD who represents Cork North Central.

“It was an incredible day,” she said.