InFocus featuring Holyoke St. Patrick's Parade Committee

From the 22 News Plus Studio, this is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Barry. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host, Patrick Barry. We're here in the 22 News Plus Studios today. It is the Irish High Holy Season. It's March, and we get ready to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Being Irish, it's a fun and festive time for me, my family, and friends, and we get to celebrate for the whole month long. St. Patrick's Day, if memory serves me right, is a Tuesday this year, which means the, what is it, the second biggest St. Patrick's parade in the country or something like that, falls the following Sunday on March 22nd. But joining me today in the studio, I'm excited because I have, from the Holyoke St. Patrick's Parade Committee, on your left is Haley Dunn. She is the past parade president, and on your right is Jim Wildman. He is the current parade president. Thank you both for joining me. It's gonna be a fun conversation. Thank you. Haley, I wanna start with you because you're past president, and Jim, you've been doing this for just about a year, right? Just about, nine months. When, actually, let me, when did you get announced as your parade president? So the way we- So like the day after the parade ended last year? No, so our season actually works on July 1st to June 31st. Okay. But this started a number of years ago, about three years ago, when you run for election and you become the second vice president. Okay. And then you move up to first, and then you become president. Very good, very good. And Haley, because you are past president, what are some of the things that, the help that you've given Jim along the way? You really have to learn trial by fire, get thrown into it, really. But as Jim alluded to, you have about a three-year advance notice that you're gonna become president. So that gives you the time to think about who you wanna work with as your co-chairs, to think about award recipients. So it really gives you some time to plan ahead. What are some different things about your parade year that you wanna implement? Cause it may take some time, and Jim will talk about that. But I had about a five years because I was a voted second VP in 19, 2019 or 2018. But then the COVID years happened. We didn't have a parade for two years. So I had about a five-year window to get ready for mine. And I had a great parade in 2024. It was a wonderful experience. And I'm glad to be here with Jim to celebrate his year. So the way you describe it though, it sounds as if each year is unique and it's up to the current president to sort of make the parade their own. Yeah, we have an overall structure of how our subcommittees work and events that we have. But the president, every committee chair serves at the pleasure of the president. You can appoint new chairs every year. You can switch them up, you can leave them. For the most part, most of the chairs will stay in their positions as long as they wanna stay there. Before you become president, when I'm a second, I'm talking to all these chairs. Hey, what do you think for next year? Do you wanna do it next year? Do you wanna make any changes next year? How are things working? What doesn't work? So all that stuff is constantly. And I had a notebook filled before I even actually took my presidency just to make changes or to minor adjustments that I felt or in discussion with other people. Certain events might've needed little tweaks. And while you don't wanna micromanage people, you add your two cents in where you can. And sometimes they will go, well, that's a great idea. We can try it. Or, well, we don't do that because we've tried that before and it doesn't necessarily work. So you have to be able to work with all your chairs on it. So is there, I have to imagine there's a lot of value in the institutional knowledge of those folks who have been on it probably since before you guys were born. Yeah, so- Because your point, Jim, is, hey, we tried that once. It didn't work, here's why. Oh, okay, maybe we haven't tried it in 20 years. So we have what we call in our meetings Table 1, which is a group of our senior members who, again, they've been on this committee longer than I've been alive. I'm 48 and some of them have been on there for a lot longer than that. And they are, when I started on this committee 15 years ago, they were a wealth of knowledge for me to just ask questions. Hey, why does this work this way? Well, it works this way for these reasons. Thank you very much. Or why can't we do it this way? And they'll look at you and go, well, that's the way we've always done it. And then you talk to a few other people, you go, let's try this. You know, I was co-chair of the road race for 10 years. There were a lot of things that Brian Dunahue and I tried. A bunch of them worked. Some of them didn't. But you don't know until you try. And you don't know. And everything that we tried new, we made sure we crossed our Ts and dotted our Is and we had a game plan in place. And then we do after actions after the road race. And we go, that didn't work so well. Or yeah, that worked really well. Let's keep it in. But you're always listening to your fellow committee members. You're listening to the public. For example, the road race, we had a, we never, we did a cluster start. Everybody lined up in one shoot and the gun went off. And then, you know, the runners were complaining, hey, my time's not right because I'm crossing the mat four minutes after the race goes off. Because it takes, when we were doing that, sometimes it would take six minutes to get 7,500 people through the starting line. It's a big deal. So one of our members, Al Tardy, who has been an asset to the committee, and he's run, he's actually run across the country. He's written books and he's been a great asset. He said, hey, why don't we try a wave start? And I said, all right, let's figure, I go figure this out, bring a game plan, how it's going to work, how many people. Sure enough, the next meeting, he had a whole page written out of, this is what it should look like, this is how it would work, this is how we manage it. And we brought it to the road race committee and we all discussed it and we said, yeah, let's try this. And that has been implemented since we did it. I think, I want to say we did that back in 2014. Wow. So it was successful enough to hang on to. Very successful. So now we actually have like five different starts for the race. You know, your Olympians and your people who are running fast, they get the first gun. And then guys like me are pulling up the rear and we're walking. Yeah, then we have the semi-fast people and then we have the medium fast people and then we have everyone else who's there to run on Saturday and run the race and they go off as well in their own group. And it's all based on times, you enter your times when you sign up, how you think you're going to run, that determines your location. And then we have the walk. We have the two mile walk that goes off down the road and we stop everybody at the starting line. So all their bibs go through at the correct time. So all their numbers are accurate and everybody gets their own shotgun start. And that was all brought on by, I'd like to take credit for it, but it's not my idea, but it's all, that's how we all work together as a committee. Fantastic. We're up on our first commercial break. So stay with us. We've got plenty more to talk about when it comes to the Holyoke St. Patrick's Parade. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Welcome back everyone to this edition of In Focus. We're excited today because we're talking about the Holyoke St. Patrick's Parade and road race. Sitting across from me is Haley Dunchy is a former parade president and Jim Wildman, he is the current parade president. So thank you both for joining me. It's a fun conversation because it is. It's a month of fun in Holyoke, but it doesn't come without a lot of work. And Jim, just before we went to break, you blew me away when you said 400 volunteers for the road race. Yes. That's a lot of people. But, and I always say this, I don't think the general public really understands how valuable volunteers are. So knowing that, do you, I mean, it's kind of late notice now, but are you still looking for volunteers or is now the time to sign up for next year? So as far as the road race goes, we have a very steady group of people and organizations that come back every year to help out. You know, we have, as I mentioned earlier, Al Tardy, he brings what we call Al's pals from his running groups down in the Worcester area. They come up to help us out. The Blessed Sacrament School PTO does the water stop at Blessed Sacrament. There's St. Mary's of Westfield runs a water stop on Homestead Ave. My alma mater. One Hoyoke runs a water stop at the Hoyoke High School. And then we actually have people and volunteers from Stop and Shop who man our finish line. And that's where they provide food and water for the runners as they finish. We also have like the Civil Air Patrol. We have teachers from Chicopee Compton High School who come over and they basically set up our starting line for us. And you know, there's so many people that do so many jobs and we need that and we appreciate that because our committee just isn't large enough. We have a very good committee, but it's just not large enough to accommodate those kinds of numbers on Saturday. And then moving over to Sunday, you know, we're a two and a half mile parade with 15 to 20,000 marchers. It takes a lot of people in the parking lot to set those up. But the one place where we do need volunteers always is our sign carriers. Okay. You know, the people- So you get to march in the parade if you're a volunteer. Yeah, you get to march in the parade. You get a nice sweatshirt. You get to smile for TV. And they're basically the people who carry all the signs down that all our sponsors are listed on, the names of the award winners. You know, like I'm the president this year, so my name will be in front of me. The award winners all get their names on a banner and we need those people. And every person that does that gets a, they get $20. You know, if they say they march for, like the Boys and Girls Club, for example, every marcher that comes gets $20 and we'll, usually we send it to the organization because they volunteer. So it helps out these different organizations. That's a great idea. I didn't know you understood that. Yeah, that's, it helps us and it helps them. So that works out great. But most of the parade functions on Sunday are done by our Yellow Jackets, our committee members. And then you can never overlook all the public safety help we get from, you know, the Hoya Police, the State Police, Hoya Fire, our Department of Public Works, who five minutes after the parade goes by, they're through with the sweepers and the vacs and the trash cans, and you can't even tell there was a parade there. Except for the green line that goes down the middle of the street. Except for that green line. They are, all of our public safety, all of our city officials that take care of that are, they do a phenomenal job that we can. You know, Jim, you talked about some, you know, some of the people that are marching in the parade. And aside from you, there are a lot of award winners that the parade committee hands out. Who's the, I guess like the Grand Poobah of the award winners? So our Grand Poobah is our Grand Marshal. Okay. You know, all of our regionals have marshals, but there's only one Grand Marshal. Right. And that's in Hoya. And this year it's Michael Moyarty. Michael Moyarty has been on this committee for 30 plus years, I believe. He's the director of One Hoya, a great organization that works on reestablishing blighted properties in Hoya, bringing them back to life, establishing properties for people to buy, people to rent, and Hoya provides housing. So that, he was a school committee member for a long time. He was an attorney in the city. And the funny part was, as we were talking the other day, he goes, I've never had to drive more than five minutes from my house for my job. So- That must be nice. Yeah, it's great for him, but he's very much Hoya. He loves the city. He loves doing what he can to make sure the city is heading in the right direction. And he's a huge, huge advocate for childhood literacy. He's been on the state school committee, the national school committee board. He actually just got off the national last year and he traveled all over the country for that, advocating for childhood literacy. And that's huge because in Hoya, we're a little bit behind on that bar. And Michael, through advocating at the legislature, brings a lot of money into the local communities for that to help all these children. So being named Grand Marshal is a huge honor and well-deserved. Very well-deserved. His father? Yeah, well, honestly, and that's just on his personal life. I mean, the work he's done for the parade and the parade committee and helping, especially with the ambassador's award, Michael and his committee have really helped to strengthen the relationships between the Irish, the Republic of Ireland and the United States and to ensure that we get ambassador folks to come to the parade each and every year. And so Michael has just been instrumental in keeping that award live each and every year. This year, we're excited to welcome Katie Taylor, who is an Irish boxer and Olympian. She's a gold medalist and she's phenomenal. We're really excited to have Katie come and march in the parade. Haley, who else, you know, for the casual observer, who else would they be able to see in the parade, you know, walking by them if they get their lawn chair out there in their curbside? Oh, goodness. Well, we have, of course, our Colleens. Everybody loves the Colleens, and we're very excited about the Hoya Grand Colleen, Jade and Christy and her court. And many of the other regional committees have their own Colleens as well. And so they're just emblematic of distinguished women who are doing great things in their careers or in school, just overall ambassadors for their community. And so they're terrific women that'll be in our parade. But of course, we have our own award recipients. The committee has our own awards that we give to our own folks. Those that have helped to ensure that the parade goes off each and every year, and they each bring their own important traits to the parade. We're excited. Tessa Murphy-Romboletti, who is currently the City Council President for Hoya Oak, is our Rowan Award recipient. And she's been on managing the website and getting our sign carriers, talking about our sign carriers. Her and Megan Kelleher bring, you know, dozens and dozens each and every year. So we're really excited to honor Tessa and Jim Menard, who's our Gallivan Award recipient. May not be a resident of the city of Hoya, but we still wanna recognize all of our hard-deserved committee recipients. And D.J. O'Connor, a longstanding business owner, Hoya Business owner, longstanding parade committee member. He's our George O'Connell Award recipient. Fundraising is critical to ensure that we get a parade each and every year. So we're recognizing him for those fundraising efforts. And then the Citizenship Award recipient. The Citizenship is an award that we give to an individual organization each and every year that has contributed greatly to the city of Hoya Oak and or the parade. And this year we're really excited to honor the Miracle League of Western Massachusetts. I don't know, Jim, if you wanna talk a little bit more about them and- Yeah, this has been- They're bringing to the parade. Yeah, the Miracle League is a fantastic organization who works with children who have some disabilities and they run fantastic programs where they play baseball. And they have groups of volunteers that will help the kids bat, help the kids get to first base and second base. What a great group. Which is the smile that it puts on the kids' faces is unbelievable. They have bowling in the winter. They go bowling, which they're doing right now. But it allows kids who may not be able to normally play these sports, participate, and just brings a lot of enjoyment into their lives. And they are our Citizenship Award winners. Haley just said this year. So it's great to have them on board. Fantastic. We are up on our second commercial break. So folks, stay right with us. We've got plenty more to talk about. We're back in just a few minutes. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Welcome back, everyone, to this edition of In Focus. I'm very excited today to be joined across the desk by Haley and Jim. We're talking about the Holyoke St. Patrick's Parade. Thank you both for joining me. Haley is past president. Jim is the current president for 2026. Thank you both for your time. We appreciate it. Jim, just before we went to break, you were talking about an organization that has been helping out and that you guys have recognized this year. But they're doing something different this year for the parade, aren't they? Yeah, so this year, we're having what we call Sensory Street. It's gonna be an area of quiet for people, children who may not be able to handle the loud noises, the sirens. So last year, we traveled to Tralee Island with Mayor Garcia as he was the marshal for their parade in Ireland. We had 29 of us go over with him, 28 of us go over with him. And we lined up for their parade and we came out of the lot. And then we're walking down the street and all of a sudden it got really quiet. And we had seen the signs that said Sensory Street and we didn't quite understand it. And we saw some kids with some headphones on and some other kids who were there. But all the bands in front of us stopped, they got real quiet. And we all kind of, we took it in and we all were like, oh, this is pretty neat. And when we got back here and we got through our weekend, I was talking to a few people on the community and I says, we need to do that. I says, because I don't know of another organization or another parade- It's a great idea. That does that. And then in talking with our Citizenship Award Committee about who we were gonna choose that year with the Miracle League being our choice, I says, we gotta find a way to work this out. So we have a committee from Parade Coordination, another past president, Johnny Bowler, who are really working on that. Another past president, Kathy Lynch, who's working on this as well. And we found an area on Appleton Street near the War Memorial in Hoyoke, where we're gonna have a place to wind down the fire trucks, wind down the bands, wind down the police cars. And there's going to be signage so people know. Lots of signage. There's gonna be people telling you. By the time the marchers get down there, they'll have been told five or six times it's coming up. So their participation packets will have notifications. But everybody that we've talked to, everybody we've mentioned to has been so excited. The Miracle League, they have, I believe, over 80 people marching with them this year. And then they are also, they've been helping us. What do we need to do in this area? We've been working on that. Also working with the War Memorial, the veterans groups there, it's gonna allow them to bring veterans who have PTSD, who can't deal with the noises. They'll be able to attend a parade for the first time ever. That is a fantastic idea. All right, Haley, I look at the clock. We've only got a couple minutes left. What have we missed? What haven't we talked about yet? Well, besides talking about how inclusive our parade is going to be this year, we're very excited about that. And then finally, we are welcoming home to Massachusetts, our JFK Award recipient, Chief Jim McDonnell. Chief McDonnell is currently the chief of police for Los Angeles Police Department. He's a Brookline, Massachusetts native, and he has risen the ranks out in the West Coast. Has got lots of things to make him worthy of the JFK National Award. This is an award that obviously was named after President Kennedy. He was the first national award recipient at our parade in 1952. And it honors somebody who has distinguished themselves in their career, their personal life. And we're really excited to welcome Chief McDonnell to Holyoke Parade Weekend. We're gonna be honoring him at a dinner Saturday evening. He's gonna be kickstarting our road race on Saturday, and he's really excited to come to Holyoke. And we're just really excited to showcase our 73rd parade, right? I'm very excited about it. Yeah, we're expecting hundreds of thousands of people to come into the city over the weekend, and hopefully another million or so to watch us. Patrick, you and I, and Angela on- That's right, I'm gonna pull it up. Where is it? Yeah, for the broadcast. Great morning. That button, right there. But it's such a special weekend in Holyoke. It's a special weekend in Western Massachusetts. It's a time for our community to shine, not only, you know, smiling Irish eyes, but it's a time to reflect and to love all that's great about Western Massachusetts. So we can't wait. Jim, if someone has never been to the parade, which I can't imagine, anyone living within a 50-mile radius has never been to this parade, what would you say to get them to go? I would say that if you're gonna come out, it's a great family day here in Holyoke. The kids have so much to see and enjoy. There's plenty of food throughout the, you know, the fair food that everybody loves, the fried dough and the corn dogs. You know, even as I work in my yellow jacket, the years when I'm not being present, I'll sneak over to the fried dough booth for every fried dough. It's just a great day that you can relax and enjoy all the other people. Everybody's friendly. There's never any issues. Everybody is just there to have a good time, enjoy the bands, enjoy the music. The Shriners come through. Everybody loves the Shriners with their motorcycles, their cars. The Mummers. The Mummers are a huge draw. We have the Hoyo Caledonians in there that everybody loves. The bands, Ti & Guau, that comes out of New York City, they are probably the most disciplined band I've ever seen in my life. They march, their eyes are always straight ahead. They turn corners in perfect unison, in step. They're one of the most impressive bands that we have in the entire parade, and they're 100, 120 strong. Wow, that is fantastic. Well, our time has come to an end. Hoyo St. Patrick's Day dot com. Hoyo St. Patrick's Parade dot com. Hoyo St. Patrick's Parade. There we go. Folks, if you want to learn more. Jim Haley, thank you so very much. Haley, I will see you on parade day from the booth. Looking forward to it. Thank you all. Thank you. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry.