ENDLESS IRISH
Longest Pittsburgh St. Patrick’s Day parade in memory celebrates Ireland
Fear a bhi fada!
Which translates roughly from Gaelic to English as: Man that was long!
That was the second most common remark Saturday from some of the several hundred thousand fans of Pittsburgh’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which at 3½ hours was far and away the longest parade anyone could recall.
“Longest one I’ve ever been to,” said Don McConnaughy of Beaver, who said he has been to the past nine St. Patrick’s Day parades, minus the times it rained.
But the most common remark during and after the parade Saturday that featured 200 marching groups, and nearly 25,000 individual participants in all, from dog clubs to Irish dancing outfits, to bagpipes and marching bands, Punxsutawney Phil and the world’s largest (fake) potato?
“This is awesome,” said Maria French, who drove an hour to the city from Derry, Pa., with a friend and their three young daughters. “I love all of it.”
Mac McCafferty, the new chairman of the parade committee and retired city schools history teacher, notes that he intended this year’s parade to be large, with more bands, more dancers, more everything.
The never-ending stream of groups helped build the crowds at its peak near 11 a.m. to three and four people deep along the parade route on Grant Street, and even thicker when it turned onto the Boulevard of the Allies.
“We’re all having fun today,” Mr. McCafferty said near the start of the parade just after 10 a.m. “It’s a good day to be Irish.” But was it maybe too long? “Don’t ask us,” Carrie McConnaughy, the adult daughter of Don, said as 1 p.m. approached and there were still parade floats to see as she sat on top of a raised planter in the middle of Grant Street. “Ask all the people around us who aren’t here anymore.”
One definite positive from the growth in the parade was that it only added to the debate among revelers about what they liked best.
“I have to say the Irish dancers,” said Ms. French.
“The doggies!” her daughter, Zoe, 9, said excitedly.
“The clowns!” her other daughter, Charly, 4, exclaimed.
The one parade attraction that seemed to get the most cell phones out for video or photo time?
That would be the world’s largest potato, officially called “The Big Idaho Potato,” a 12,000pound, concrete steel and wooden potato that is so large it has to be transported onaheavy-dutyflatbedtruck.
Not one to undersell anything, Mr. McCafferty even offered a boast sure to be debated by some: “It’s bigger than the [giant rubber] duck. That duck was nothing in comparison.”
That remains to be seen. But one thing that is not debated was parade-goers affection for the parade honoree, the late Steelers president Dan Rooney, who died last year.
Five of Mr. Rooney’s nine children, and a bunch of his grandchildren, attended the parade, some riding in cars, but others marching and waving as they
went, with warm cheers raining down on them along the route.
“It’s wonderful,” said Duffy Rooney, Mr. Rooney’s daughter, who noted that he “wouldn’t like the attention, but appreciated it.”
Her brother, Jim, said while his father would have thought being honored in the parade was “too much,” he did “love Ireland and he would have thought this was a big honor.”
While the Rooneys began the parade with a warm remembrance, one of the last entrants in the parade helped endit with tears of joy.
The Port Authority for the first time decided to decorate a green bus in shamrocks and enter the parade. And just to make it even more interesting the driver they chose, Ryan McArdle, brought along a sign that he attached to the front: “Robyn, willyou marry me?”
On Grant Street between Third and Fourth avenues, Mr. McArdle stopped the bus where his girlfriend of eight years,Robyn Pawlos, was celebrating the day with her familyand friends.
There he dropped to one knee to hear her answer — she said yes immediately — and give her a diamond engagementring.
“I was wondering why my dad came out on St. Patrick’s Day,” Ms. Pawlos said immediatelyafterward, still wiping thetears from her eyes.
“He never comes out for this.
“I had no clue and I’m very angry at everybody else who did,” she said with a laugh. “I’m still a little bit shocked.”