The 2009 Glen Cove St. Patrick’s Day Parade was led by Robert P. Lynch as Grand Marshal and Barney Lough as Aide. The parade was followed by a luncheon at Page One Restaurant in Glen Cove.
After Parade Ceremony from AOH Division 8 on Vimeo.
The Glen Cove St. Patrick's Day Parade
Celebrating Irish Culture on the North Shore
The 2009 Glen Cove St. Patrick’s Day Parade was led by Robert P. Lynch as Grand Marshal and Barney Lough as Aide. The parade was followed by a luncheon at Page One Restaurant in Glen Cove.
After Parade Ceremony from AOH Division 8 on Vimeo.
by Joe McDonald
NEW YORK – With the weather in the mid-50s, and not a cloud in the sky, the 2009 New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade was going to be a success for Division 8.
But this year was even more special, because one of our own, past Division 8 President and current Nassau County President John O’Connell, was named an Aide to the Grand Marshal.
“What a wonderful day! Glorious!” O’Connell said. “This was one of the happiest days in my life to serve as an Aide to the Grand Marshal of the NYC St. Patrick’s Day Parade.”
Backed by seven members of the men’s division and 15 of the ladies, Division 8 marched under its own flag for the first time in three years.
As the division proceeded up 5th Avenue, crowds of three to four deep lined the streets cheered on the brothers and sisters. And the special moment came when they arrived at 63rd Street to see O’Connell standing in front of Central Park. “One of the best moments.” O’Connell said, “was to cheer my Division 8 men on as they passed the reviewing stand.”
After the two mile walk, the division went to a local restaurant on the Upper East Side and enjoyed some well deserved refreshments.
But for the Division 8’s man of the hour, the day was just starting.
“The Cardinal’s Mass in the morning,” O’Connell said, “the happy Irish faces along the route, the grace of the Grand Marshal, seeing my loved ones in the stands, the weather, it was all so great, I will remember this day for all my life.”
All members of Division 8 are welcome to march in the parade every year. If you are Irish, Catholic and interested in joining, please follow this link for more information.
by Joe McDonald
Glen Cove 2008 St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Grand Marshal John W. C. Canning. Aides Marylin Johnson and Jeffrey Moore.
by Joe McDonald
Glen Cove 2007 Parade. Grand Marshal John McDougal. Aide Sheila Zeineth.
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Glen Cove 2005 St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Grand Marshal James McCabe.
2004 Glen Cove St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Grand Marshal Mary Ann Holzkamp. Aide to the Grand Marshal Síghle M. Lynch.
The Fifteenth Annual Glen Cove St. Patrick’s Day Parade took place on Sunday, March 23, 2003. The parade was special in that it marked both the Glen Cove Parade’s 15th Anniversary and the 50th Anniversary of the Glen Cove Hibernians.
The Grand Marshal of the 2003 parade was Irish radio personality Tony Jackson of WRHU Radio Hofstra, the “voice of Irish America on Long Island”. Tony was accompanied by Aide to the Grand Marshal Patsy Furlong, Glen Cove AOH member.
by Joe McDonald
The Glen Cove St. Patrick’s Day Parade The Parade has taken place annually since 1989. The parade has grown to be the largest annual parade in Glen Cove and a civic celebration that is eagerly awaited each spring by all residents of the North Shore and the entire Irish community of Long Island.
It is our custom each year to honor a person as “Grand Marshal” of the Glen Cove St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and one or more additional individuals as “Aides to the Grand Marshal:
1989 John F. Sweeney Former Postmaster, City of Glen Cove 1990 P.O. Stephen McDonald Hero Police Officer 1991 Hon. Denis Dillon District Attorney, Nassau Co. 1992 Sr. Janet A. Fitzgerald President, Molloy College 1993 Joseph V. Buckley Restaurateur 1994 Rep. Peter King Congressman 1995 Jack Ryan President, SEIU Local 74 1996 William V. Whelan President, Emerald Society, FDNY 1997 Brian Fitzpatrick Councilman, City of Glen Cove 1998 Michael McCormick National Historian, AOH 1999 Jack Irwin Governor’s Assistant for Irish Affairs 2000 Hon. Thomas R. Suozzi Mayor, City of Glen Cove; Nassau County Executive 2001 Patrick J. Lynch President, NYC Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association 2002 Mary Gilroy-Doohan, M.D. Director, Emergency Services NSUH Glen Cove 2003 Tony Jackson Irish radio personality WRHU-FM Radio, Hofstra Univesity 2004 Mary Ann Holzkamp Mayor, City of Glen Cove 2005 James McCabe Hibernian Activist 2006 The "Fighting 69th" 2007 Jack McDougal Police Sergeant 2008 John W.C. Canning Attorney and Public Servant 2009 Robert P. Lynch
by Joe McDonald
Robert P. Lynch was born in Queens, New York, the first of seven children born to Robert B. and Mary Anne Hyland Lynch. He resides in Glen Cove, Long Island with his wife Síghle and their children, Kieran, Aidan, Conor and Maura. He is a graduate of St. John’s University, where he received a BA in history in 1977, and of St. John’s Law School, where he received a Doctor of Laws degree in 1980. Robert is a practicing attorney, with offices located Glen Cove and Williston Park.
Robert cherishes his Irish roots and heritage. He has from his youth been an activist in Irish causes and follows a long family practice of love and support for both the countries of their origin and adoption, keeping one foot firmly planted on each side of the Atlantic. While he is “first generation” on his mother’s side, from Kiltimagh, in Mayo, the same County, along with Kerry, produced his earliest American ancestors, in 1820, followed by his maternal grandfather who arrived here from Westmeath in the early 1900’s. He has traveled to his ancestral homeland many times for family, political and musical activities.
Robert follows in the footsteps of his brother, Patrick J. Lynch, President of the NYC Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA), who served as our Grand Marshal in 2001.
Robert has been a proud Hibernian all his adult life, being a Charter Member of Div. 13 in Queens and serving Glen Cove Division 8 as Corresponding Secretary, Vice President, with two terms as President in the 1990’s and two terms just ended. He is also former Chairman of our Parade.
Ten years ago he devised the idea of a consortium he called Cairdenet, (invoking in loose Irish translation the idea of a “net of friends”) to allow Irish, religious, charitable and cultural associations he was involved with to establish and maintain a presence on the internet, something they had hitherto been slow to do for financial and technical reasons. As part of this arrangement Division 8 was able to establish one of the first and largest Hibernian websites in the Metropolitan area.
Robert is well known as a traditional Irish piper. Robert has been active for many years in a wide variety of efforts in support of Irish freedom and is a member of Friends of Sinn Fein and a founding member of the Brehon Law Societies in both NYC and Long Island. He is an outspoken and active supporter of the Irish peace process, being a member of a delegation which met twice with the International Monitoring Commission (IMC) monitoring the Irish ceasefire and of the first Irish American delegation to meet with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to encourage the formation of the present coalition government between that party and Sinn Fein.
In addition to his legal practice, Robert works as Supervisor of the after-school recreational and tutoring program at St. Martin De Porres School in Uniondale, where he also instructs students in the Irish tin whistle and pipes. He is an active member of St. Boniface Parish in Sea Cliff, where he is a Eucharistic Minister the webmaster and instructs parents in the Baptism program.
He is a member of the County Tyrone and County. Mayo Societies, the Co. Tyrone Pipers, the Long Island Uilleann Pipers and was a founder of the North Shore Irish American Cultural Society and the St. John’s University Irish Society.
Address by Robert P. Lynch at the Grand Marshal’s Sash Presentation Ceremony, February 22, 2009
About thirty years ago I read an article in the Sunday NY Times about a young Jewish man from New York, Bill Ochs. Bill had become fascinated by Irish music and especially the Irish bagpipes.
He sought out the few pipers left on Long Island and the Northeast and set out to revive that instrument, even though most Irish people seemed to have abandoned it.
He went to Ireland and sought out elderly traditional musicians to teach him. They made the point to him that being an Irish piper was not only about being a proficient musician but also involved another special job. That job was to preserve and tell the story of the people who had produced this musical tradition, and not to let it die. It meant telling the people their own story.
I was reminded of Bill’s lesson a few years ago when Barney Lough and I attended a big annual St. Patrick’s dinner in Manhattan. It was addressed by the acclaimed Irish actor Gabriel Byrne.
Gabriel asked those gathered to contemplate what purpose is served by getting together for these St. Patrick’s Day events.
He reminisced of how, as a child in Dublin, he listened to his relatives from Galway sit at home in the kitchen and tell stories. That was how he learned of and developed a love for his culture.
Gabriel answered his own question by suggesting that St. Patrick’s Day events serve some of the same purpose for Irish Americans that those kitchen gatherings did for him: they give us the chance to think about and share our story.
I agree with Gabriel. The value of events such as our parade is that the give us the chance we might not otherwise have to ask ourselves “who are we” and “what is our story?” It gives us the opportunity to tell that story to our children and to our neighbors.
For all their trouble and expense, these are opportunities not to be missed. The fact is that, for a people who are supposed to be great storytellers, we don’t practice that art very well when it comes to our own story. We don’t value the concept of contemplating who we are and telling others about it.
There are many reasons for this. It has been argued that this is the result of a subconscious lack of esteem for our own culture, coupled with a fear of expressing it openly, possibly the legacy of generations of colonial oppression.
Whatever the reason, the fact is that many of our immigrant ancestors didn’t tell us their story. We, the Irish Diaspora in America, remains very Irish, indeed more than more Irish than most of us know, on what might be called an unconscious level, even many generations removed from “home”.
The fact that we don’t have a highly conscious level of awareness of who we are and where we come from leaves us somewhat inarticulate in describing ourselves. Outsiders like the musician I spoke of earlier can often be more eloquent in explaining who the American Irish are than we can ourselves.
It has been said that the beautiful stained glass in venerable European church buildings were first developed to aid people who weren’t full literate enough to learn about their faith by reading Scripture and the written works of the church.
It might be said that events that surround St. Patrick’s Day in Irish America serve somewhat of the same purpose for our people. We of the Hibernian Divisions of Glen Cove have been blessed with a veritable Parthenon of personalities whom we can view for a personification of who the Irish in America are.
They include not only our long list of distinguished Grand Marshals, but also the Aides to the Grand Marshal (for as is the case this year the Aides are often just as worthy or more so of recognition as the person with the top billing), Hibernians of the year and Presidents.
They include:
Ladies and Gentlemen, let us go forward with these models in mind to continue to tell the story of who we are.
by Joe McDonald
Barney Lough was born and raised in New York City. After graduating from Cardinal Hayes High School he joined the Navy. Thirteen months of his 7 years in the Navy were spent in Korea. Upon leaving the Navy he obtained a position with the United Nations in its security division. In May 1957, Barney met, courted and married Laura Prezioso also from New York City. Barney and Laura are the proud parents of Annemarie O’Hara and Patrick Lough who have given them seven grandchildren. Barney took a position with the Long Island Railroad as a police officer in 1958 before transferring over to passenger service where he worked as a conductor for the next 30 years.
Barney was influential in starting a new Division 19 of Hibernians in Port Washington where he presently holds the office of President. His heart however is and always will be with Division 8 of the Hibernians where he was an active member for 5 years. Barney keeps active in their Parade Committee.
Barney’s life has always been dedicated to family, church and community. His other involvements include The Knights of Columbus where he is a past Grand Knight and is a member of the Fourth Degree. He is a Past Exalted Ruler of the Port Washington Elks, an active member in the Port Washington Sons of Italy, and a Lifetime member of Port Washington Cancer Care. Barney is active in St. Peter’s Parish where he has served as an usher for many years. As his personality dictates, Barney will continue as in the past to serve those organizations he hold dear.
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