70 & Counting: How Newport’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade became an annual tradition

Past parade photos by Dave Hansen

On a March morning in 1842, members of Newport’s Irish Catholic community gathered at a small church on Barney Street, attended Mass, and then set out together on foot. Preceded by a band and a green banner, they marched through the city’s streets before separating and then reassembling hours later for a formal dinner.

That procession, organized by the Newport Catholic Temperance Society, is considered Newport’s first St. Patrick’s Day Parade — though it would be many decades before the tradition took hold in any consistent way. Parades were held sporadically throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, with some years passing without any reported public observance.

The parade Newport celebrates today — the one that transforms Thames Street into a sea of green with thousands of spectators lining the sidewalks to watch a procession of military contingents, war veterans, high school marching bands, and bagpipers — dates back to 1957.

That year was reported to be the “biggest St. Patrick’s Day celebration here in half a century” by The Newport Daily News, which described the town as having “shone like a little bit of emerald heaven.” It also marked the beginning of what will be celebrated this March as the parade’s 70th anniversary (though Covid-19 forced the cancelation of the event in 2020 and 2021).

“If you went back to the 1800s, they didn’t do it necessarily every year,” says Dennis Sullivan, longtime chairman of the Newport St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee. “I don’t think it will ever go away.”

Sullivan has been involved with the parade since the early 1990s and has led the committee for more than 25 years. He grew up watching the procession pass through the city’s old Fifth Ward and remembers it as much smaller event — a shorter route, a much smaller spectator crowd, and a lineup that could pass by in less than 30 minutes. “There was one bagpipe band then, usually,” he says, recalling that green John Deere tractors brought up the rear and signaled the end of the parade. “The churches were more involved. They would put together floats. But it was never a huge parade. And then it changed over the years.”

The faces of the politicians, Navy marching band musicians, and Boy and Girl scouts featured every year have changed, and a line of female flight attendants — they were called “stewardesses” at the time — from Aer Lingus no longer make the trek in their shamrock-green uniforms and heels. But the Newport St. Patrick’s Day Parade still steps off every year on the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day — or on the holiday itself if March 17 falls on a Saturday — following a 9 o’clock Mass at St. Joseph’s Church on Broadway in honor of St. Patrick and St. Brigid and a mayor’s reception at nearby City Hall.

Then marchers wearing green carnations, and floats decorated with emerald balloons, Irish flags, and pots of gold at the end of paper rainbows follow the Kelly-green stripe painted down the center of the parade route. It leads from City Hall to Washington Square, along a stretch of Thames Street, onto America’s Cup Avenue and back onto Thames Street, finishing at the reviewing stand outside St. Augustine’s Church on Carroll Avenue. Irish anthems play and the scent of corned beef wafts from restaurants along Thames Street while enthusiastic spectators wearing multiple shades of green, shamrocks, and parade buttons — as well as those proclaiming “Erin Go Bragh,” “A United Ireland,” or “Kiss Me I’m Irish” — line the sidewalks.

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The modern parade took shape gradually. After the original postwar committee disbanded, the local chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians took over the parade for a time. But the effort required more time and funding than anticipated.

“It was more work and more money than anything,” says Sullivan. “So, they said, ‘Why don’t we just get rid of it?’”

Leadership then passed to the Newport Irish Heritage Association, where local lawyer Chris Behan, who serves as city solicitor, played a key role in keeping the event alive.

“Chris was like, ‘No, no, don’t let it fall by the wayside. We’ll make some changes’,” Sullivan remembers. Perhaps the biggest was changing the start of the parade from early afternoon to 11 a.m. to curb drinking along the sidelines, which was generating complaints. After Behan stepped aside, Ray Lynch, Jr. took over
and continued building the event.

When Sullivan took the helm, he approached the parade less as a ceremonial obligation and more as a business operation. Over time, the parade committee incorporated as a nonprofit organization, formalized its fundraising, and treated the event as the large, expensive, moving production it had become.

Today, the parade costs roughly $60,000 to stage, with marching bands being the biggest expense. Bands are paid to perform, and some — particularly those traveling long distances — require lodging and transportation. “A lot of people don’t realize that,” says Sullivan. “Some people say, ‘You have to pay the bands?’”

Those costs are offset through advertising in the parade program, sponsorships, donations, and fundraising events held throughout the year. One of the parade’s most recognizable traditions — the annual commemorative button — emerged alongside those efforts. Each year’s button is designed
around the Grand Marshal, with many locals collecting them.

This year’s parade, which steps off at 11 a.m. on Saturday, March 14, in front of Newport’s City Hall, will celebrate Michael and Tish Curtis Behan as co-Grand Marshals.

“They’ve been great supporters — the whole [Behan] family has been supporters over the years,” Sullivan says. This year’s parade is dedicated to the memories of Dennis Reddy and Donald Mosher.

Grand Marshals lead the procession and take part in a roast the week before the parade. When Ray Lynch was named Grand Marshal in 2011, he called it the biggest honor of his life, recalling the proclamation he received from the city and the walking stick he still keeps. “I used to help carry the banner for the Hibernians when I was very young, and then I played in the Thompson [Junior High, now Middle School], and the Rogers High School band, and then, of course, I marched as a member of the Hibernians,” Lynch said, who remains a member of the Hibernians and is the lead drummer of the AOH Pipes and Drums band, a parade favorite. “And then to be selected was just an awesome, awesome honor.

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As the parade has grown, so have its logistical demands. Public toilets, shuttle buses for bands, street barricades, and coordination with the Police and Fire departments are now standard.

Some basic logistics didn’t exist in earlier decades. “If you can believe it,” Sullivan says, “this thing never had porta-potties until around 2000.”

Changes were also made to address public behavior. As attendance increased, so did concerns about public drinking and crowd management. Local police officers cited dozens of spectators — and some marchers — throughout parade day on drinking, disorderly conduct and public urination charges; they arrested others on misdemeanor charges of fighting, vandalism and assault.

For years, The Newport Daily News published a section headlined “Police & Fire.” Editors made sure to provide plenty of space in the edition printed on the Monday after the parade to report the long list of those charged with violating a local ordinance or breaking the law before, during or after the parade.

Some derisively dubbed the annual list “The Irish Honor Roll,” although various ethnicities and heritages were represented. Most of those cited were ordered to appear in Newport Municipal Court, which sometimes scheduled multiple hearing dates to handle the number of defendants. The Newport Police Department, Salve Regina University, and the city’s Municipal Court have joined forces to reinforce expectations of acceptable parade behavior. Ordinances forbidding underage drinking, carrying an open can, bottle or other container of alcohol, and drinking on a city street are strictly enforced; violators face steep fines.

In addition to moving the parade to an earlier start time, the parade committee drew up contracts explicitly prohibiting participants from consuming or carrying alcohol in the lineup. A free Family Day
celebration was added to give children and families a place to gather after the parade. The large police presence on parade day is well known, Sullivan says, and over time, the message has taken hold. “I think [the drinking has] gotten better,” says Sullivan. “I don’t think it’s as bad as it was. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still some problems. There’s always gonna be problems when you have a big event, though.”

Law enforcement agencies coordinate extensively on parade day. Newport Police Capt. Jason Kleinknecht, who has been on the job for 25 years, said crowd behavior tends to fluctuate, often depending on the weather. In recent years, the department has brought in assistance from other agencies across the state. “We have north of 10,000 people coming to this event, and obviously a lot throughout the day,” Newport Detective John Sullivan says. “It’s a multijurisdictional event. We have zero tolerance for any disorderly behavior, any open containers, driving under the influence. We try to make it a family friendly event, and we push for that.

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While the parade looks forward, the Museum of Newport Irish History continues to look back. The Museum has spent years assembling records tracing Newport’s Irish community to long before the modern parade existed. Its collection includes baptismal records, obituaries, newspaper accounts, and oral histories.

Steve Marino, a local researcher and museum board member, said the 1842 parade was less about celebration than visibility. Many Irish workers had lived for years in boarding houses near Fort Adams, where they were employed on one of the largest construction projects in the country. When that phase ended and families began settling closer to town, the parade became a public statement.

“They were saying — I really think they were making a statement — ‘We’re not leaving just because the Fort’s done,’” explains Marino.

The fact that the first parade was sponsored by a temperance society, Marino adds, underscores how different the event was from modern celebrations. Dozens of toasts were offered that year— honoring St. Patrick, Ireland, the United States, President John Tyler, Daniel O’Connell, the political leader of Ireland’s Catholic majority, George Washington, and their Rev. O’Reilly— according to an April 1842 report in The Boston Pilot, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston.

Other archival newspaper accounts from the 1800s describe similar events: a procession escorted by the battalion of Aquidneck Rifles after Mass at St. Mary’s Church in 1870; a parade in 1877 that “dawned anything but pleasant” and when “the walking was wretched”; and a high-demand performance at the Opera House in 1899.

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This year, the Museum of Newport Irish History is marking its 30th anniversary. March programming includes cemetery tours, a trolley tour, open hours at the museum’s Interpretive Center at 648 Thames Street, and a public lecture.

On Monday, March 23, Salve Regina University professor Dr. Sean O’Callaghan will speak at the Wyndham Newport Hotel in Middletown about the literary legacy of Ireland’s Blasket Islands. Reservations are required and may be made at www.newportirishhistory.org. Admission costs $5.

The museum will host its annual Trolley Tour of Irish history on Sunday, March 22. One two-hour tour will be offered, with stops including Forty Steps on the Cliff Walk and the Barney Street Cemetery. Reservations are required, and space is limited to 35 riders.

Marino will lead free cemetery tours at Barney Street on Saturday, March 21, and at St. Mary’s Cemetery on Saturday, March 28, both starting at 1 p.m.

“Dancing at the Forty Steps” will take place on Sunday, March 29, at 3 p.m., commemorating the informal dances the Irish held there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The outdoor event will feature live music, Irish set dancing, and the Ancient Order of Hibernian Men Singers, weather permitting.

For Dennis Sullivan, the Newport St. Patrick’s Day Parade remains a public expression of Newport’s Irish history; a popular local event that has survived long periods of neglect, changing leadership, and a city that looks very different than it did in 1842. While younger generations engage with tradition in new ways, he believes the ancestral pride that sent a small group of Irishmen marching from Barney Street 184 years ago remains strong today.

It’s a sentiment held by Lynch and others honored as grand marshals over the years.

“With the rise of the information age, it’s become so popular and such a crowded event,” says Lynch. “[But] as long as it focuses on the heritage of the Irish and what it means, especially for Newport Irish, that’s all.”