Dad/daughter seeing green for St. Patrick’s Day Parade
Breda and Tim Ryan came to Arkansas from Ireland in 1980 during a nursing shortage here. As a registered nurse in a nation with a surplus of nurses, she was recruited away from their home in County Tipperary by the institution then called Baptist Medical Center.
She and dozens of other Irish nurses thought they’d work in Arkansas a few years. Instead, they stayed. “Most of the Irish girls here are all nurses,” Tim says.
They assimilated but did not forget their roots, especially when St. Patrick’s Day rolled around. Besides family-centered civic and religious events, Irish people observe the fifth-century saint’s feast by speaking Irish, wearing green and passing out shamrocks. Alcohol is allowed because traditional Lenten restrictions lift for the feast, but it’s no more the point or purpose of the day than fireworks are the reason for the Fourth of July.
Elsewhere in the Irish diaspora, immigrants had long before organized to mark March 17 with cultural celebrations bigger even than the customs in Ireland. Despite its frontier history of Irish settlers and Irish Catholic nuns, Arkansas was different.
“There was nothing Irish here at the time. There wasn’t even an Irish pub. Well, there was Bennigan’s,” Tim says, meaning no offense to the Grill & Tavern. But Patrick is not the patron saint of fried cheese sticks and green beer.
He brought Christianity to the Celtic peoples.
Where were the St. Paddy suppers and parades, the meandering ballads and fierce young dancers?
“So,” Tim says, “we formed a society.” The Irish Cultural Society of Arkansas became an official 501(c)3 nonprofit in December 1995. Its volunteers organized dance parties and concerts on or about St. Patrick’s Day in school gyms. From the start, 500 Arkansans would show up to eat stew out of bread bowls.
“We’d have Irish bands come in and make a little festival,” says the society’s current president, Eimear Ryan Fuller, whose very Irish given name (pronounced Ee-mer) proclaims her the daughter of Breda and Tim. (Grandchildren Declan and Ronan Fuller continue the legacy.)
From gyms, the society expanded its events to hotels but, Tim says, “that got pretty expensive. So, we decided we’d take the party
to the street.”
In 1998, the 100-member organization conducted what he terms a “tester” parade with 12 entries and a modest distance: three blocks from the U.S. Post Office to the Little Rock River Market.
“It was really, really short,” Eimear says.
“Well, we were told, you know, that we’d never be able to pull this off in good old Arkansas,” Tim says. But by then, Fayetteville and Eureka Springs also were hosting Irish parades. It was a trend.
“After the parade we had a shindig there in the pavilion, which was pretty successful too,” he says.
As years went along, the parade grew through energetic recruiting by volunteers like the Ryans, who enticed new participants with the nonpolitical, nonsectarian nature of the affair, the fact it cost nothing to join, and that judges’ favorite floats won cash prizes.
“We welcome and invite everyone that is interested to participate,” Eimear says. “We want to celebrate all cultures and all aspects of this community, and so long as people are excited to be there and it’s clean and family friendly … You know, that’s probably really our only requirement, that it’s a family-friendly float.”
“That’s why we have it at 1 o’clock during the day,” Tim says, “because it’s for family and there’s no shenanigans going on.”
By 2001, the parade had elongated so it started in MacArthur Park. Then North Little Rock invited the society to cross the river into Argenta. Cregeen’s Irish Pub became the backdrop of a street festival. When Dugan’s Pub opened, the festival shifted south of the river.
Today, Tim and Eimear are father-and-daughter co-chairmen for an Irish parade with about 90 entrants. At 1 p.m. Saturday it will roll out from Sixth and Main streets in North Little Rock. At a pace slow enough to enable candy-tossing but quick enough so air-cooled motorcycles don’t overheat, it will cross into Little Rock by going “up the down ramp” of the Main Street Bridge and take President Clinton Avenue past the River Market to Sherman Street. Then it’s west to the finish line at Third and Cumberland streets.
Dugan’s, at 401 E. Third St., will host a block party, and the McCafferty Academy of Irish Dance and the O’Donovan School of Irish Dance will perform “Dancing at the Crossroads” on the grandstand at Third and Rock.
The route could be longer, but they don’t like the idea of kids carrying heavy musical instruments for hours. The mile-long route takes about two hours as it is. “Assuming everything runs smoothly,” Eimear says. There was that year someone had a medical emergency that backed up the parade for an hour — but right in front of the medical tent: Chalk that up to the luck of the Irish.
And one year, a couple got married during the parade. Were they Irish? Doesn’t matter. “We take pride in that, that it’s an event for all ages and for everyone in the community,” she says, “and you don’t have to be Irish.”
“There’s not enough of us here, to begin with,” says Tim. They welcome and need more volunteers. Community participation matters to an event that depends on sponsors to underwrite all expenses, including police protection in two cities.
“The parade is fully funded by donations and sponsorships,” Eimear explains. “We couldn’t do it without that, our sponsors along with our volunteers. I mean, we couldn’t do it.”
Society members meet throughout the year. There are social gatherings at restaurants; and members volunteer together for civic causes like the Arkansas Arts Center, Arkansas PBS, Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, Arkansas Rice Depot, Central Arkansas Library System and more. Recently they’re looking into ways to support a new local club dedicated to hurling. (It’s an Irish sport with elements of lacrosse, field hockey and rugby; see arkansasonline.com/307hurling.)
“We’re just trying to continue forward, bringing the Irish culture here but also celebrating what is here and what this community is — which is very much home for all of us,” Eimear says. “You know, a lot of the immigrants now have lived here longer than they lived in Ireland.”