Parade master
April 30, 2011Where many of us drift aimlessly from one period of our lives to another, John Dunleavy has grasped the nettle at every turn. It's a long way from the small rural enclave of Coole to the highest job in the organising committee of the New York City St Patrick's Day parade; a long way that has not been travelled without a few bumps and scrapes along the way.
There have been challenges and controversies and legal battles, but through it all, what shines through when you speak to John Dunleavy is integrity and absolute respect for Irish tradition and heritage. You may not always agree with his point of view, but you can admire, or be inspired by, the fortitude with which he holds it.
The March 17th gathering, which sees in excess of 200,000 people march up Fifth Avenue from 44th to 86th Street and gets four hours of national television coverage, has become synonymous with our national holiday. For one day a year, New York becomes the capital of Ireland, and John Dunleavy is the man who oversees it all.
The best place to start? The beginning.
John Dunleavy was 18 when he left Westmeath for London. It was a decision which meant he would never again live in his homeland, but one which he says he doesn't regret for a moment.
It was 1956, in the midst of perhaps Ireland's darkest days. Looking back, he says, "There was a lack of opportunities in Ireland. Most people hadn't the chance to get additional schooling. A lot of my buddies were emigrating to England or America, and you got that wanderlust in your blood."
He spent the next seven years in London, working on the buses by day and attending Irish dancehalls such as the Shamrocks at Elephant & Castle, the Garryowen in Hammersmith, the Galtee Mor in Cricklewood. Then, conscious to grasp opportunities when they came round, he boarded a plane bound for New York. The transatlantic journey has changed unrecognisably over the past half a century.
"There was a whole procedure you had to go through," he says. "It wasn't as simple as getting on a plane and arriving at Idlewild. I took a physical examination at the American embassy in London, got all sorts of records from Ireland to show that I was of good moral character, no criminal record and all the rest. The draft was on at that time too, and I had to raise my right hand in the embassy and take an oath that I would register for the selective service within six months of arriving. They gave me a big brown envelope full of documents and if you arrived in Idlewild without those you wouldn't get in. So I held onto that with two hands..."
Two years in the military followed, in New Jersey and Hawaii. One of his comrades, he recalls fondly, was Raymond Flynn, "a basketball player from Providence College, who later became Mayor of Boston and United States ambassador to the Vatican."
After that it was back on the buses with the New York transit authority, where he worked as driver - "I was on a route through Harlem on the night Martin Luther King was shot, there were more police than anyone else on the bus" - dispatcher and scheduler, as chief dispatcher and then general superintendent of his division. He retired in 1991 after more than 25 years of service.
He was just past 50 years of age, though, and retirement for John Dunleavy was never going to be about taking it easy. By then he had already been involved in the New York parade for many years, as Financial Secretary, Treasurer and Vice-President. "When you come out here," he says, "you become active in a lot of things, a variety of different outside activities. Life wasn't just about your job. I found the parade opened up an awful lot of doors, and I've met thousands and thousands of people down through the years."
In 1994 he was elected Chairman of the New York St Patrick's Day parade, a position he has held ever since. He is fiercely proud both of the parade and its history - it will celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2012, when a series of special events are planned to mark the occasion - and its role in advancing Irish tradition and heritage. And when those canons were threatened he has never been afraid to fight for his incontrovertible beliefs.
If he is following in anyone's footsteps, it is perhaps those of Judge James Comerford, one of his predecessors who served as Chairman from 1965 to '84. "He ran the parade like he ran the courtroom - with a very strong hand," says John. "He had his own interpretation of democracy and you didn't argue with him. Frankie Byrne from Leitrim took over after him and he opened it up a bit, but sometimes when you open a door you don't know who's going to come through it and you get it hard to close the door again."
The Fire Department has been one adversary, the Irish Lesbian & Gay Organisation another. Many would argue that opposition to those two organisations is ill-advised or insensitive, but in both cases John Dunleavy felt that something sacred was under threat: the entire ethos of the New York City St Patrick's Day parade.
"We've had our battles," he says. "There was litigation over the gay issue with the parade. The federal courts here agreed with us that the parade was a private parade and we could include and exclude who we wanted, and the United States Supreme Court later supported that in a unanimous decision. My position, and always has been, is that whatever anyone does in private is none of my business, and what I do in private is none of their business. If they want to come and march in the parade as individuals, they're more than welcome, and thousands of them do. But they don't march in honour of their lifestyle. There's a parade on Fifth Avenue on the last Sunday in June [the Gay Pride March] and they can march there in honour of their lifestyle. We don't accept them with banners in ours."
And the Fire Department? "The Fire Department," he replies with a dry laugh. "We have 186 affiliated organisations, and the Fire Department is one. There are 11,000 firemen in the city of New York, and one year there must have been 8,000 of them marching. Except they weren't all from New York. That year it took them 56 minutes to pass their point. They're up at the front of the parade, and they have a party. They didn't care less about their culture or their heritage, or who's behind them. Take for instance the County Cavan Association, which started marching in the parade in 1848. They're two hours behind the Fire Department, and they're delayed another hour because firemen from New Orleans and other places want to come in and march in the parade.
"As the chairman, I have to worry about that. I'm getting the flak for it and I had to take a course of action. So I moved them back 35 minutes. They went on a tear here but I didn't budge. They have the publicity. If they rescue a cat from a tree, it's headlines in the paper the next day. They're there to rescue you so everybody loves the Fire Department. I've nothing against the Fire Department here in New York but when they invite thousands of firemen in from other cities to march with them, when they're there not for their heritage but just for a party, that makes a big difference."
For many years now, alcohol has been prohibited before and during the parade. A crackdown by Judge Comerford many years ago, when he threatened to switch the parade away from St Patrick's Day and Fifth Avenue, to Central Park at the weekend, brought the desired response.
"It was like dropping an atomic bomb on the Irish-American community," says John, who is proud to carry on the torch. "There is that perception that Irish people are always falling about drunk. It's a Hollywood image. An enormous amount of Irish people never touched alcohol in their lives. Our position is that if you want to go and have a party after the parade, be my guest. No alcohol before or during, but afterwards, no problem. I have a few drinks myself afterwards every year."
If those skirmishes suggest a certain hard-line attitude, John Dunleavy insists that it's all about respect for Irish heritage and culture. In all his stories and anecdotes and memories, the central plank is an incorrigible pride in his homeland, in Irishness and all it stands for.
The GAA is one of the defining monuments of Irish heritage and John looks on it as such. Sundays often see him on the golf course - along with hundreds of others, mostly Irish and Irish-Americans, he helped to set up the Links at Unionvale course, which he proudly declares is the only golf course in the world with a large "Cead Míle Fáilte" sign at its entrance. When he isn't on the course, or spending time with his wife Mary, a member of the Kellett family from Virginia, his daughters Patricia and Catherine or his five grandchildren, John can sometimes be found at Terry Connaughton's Riverdale Steak House keeping an eye on the Gaelic football and hurling from home.
"I've always enjoyed watching the games," says John. "Terry Connaughton is my neighbour here and I go up to his place on Sundays in the summer, pay 20 bucks and watch the games. If I'm playing golf on the Sunday I'll go up on the Monday night to watch them. I love to see a good game, played in a sporting manner. There's nothing like the hurling. Football is spoiled a bit by the handpass. You'd be sitting there watching it and you'd feel your right foot going. 'Kick the damn thing!'"
It is a love which was first fostered back in Westmeath all those years ago. "I played hurling for Ringtown. Up around Castlepollard and Collinstown, Rickardstown, Brownstown, it was all hurling. The football was mostly around Moate and Athlone and those areas. It's changed a bit now but that time the only way you got around was on a bicycle.
"Did you know that when Cusack Park was opened in 1933 there was a football game between Dublin and Kerry, an exhibition game, and to throw in the ball they dropped from a little by-plane? I played in Cusack Park a few times but I never knew that until I saw that picture. There's a picture of it in a GAA book by Padraig Purcell."
These days, his GAA involvement is far away from Cusack Park and Ringtown, but it is no less pronounced. In New York, he has often been the one to ferry around the visiting Association officials. "They had the youth GAA, the CYC, in New York last year and I had the pleasure of meeting Christy Cooney and Joe McDonagh," he says. "The parade sponsored the field out there, and I volunteered to help out, so they had me driving Christy Cooney and his wife around Long Island. He's a gentleman, is Christy."
Outside of the GAA, it is clear that John Dunleavy has a keen interest in Irish history, and in particular its unbreakable bonds with America in the 170-odd years since the Great Famine drove a million or more Irish people across the Atlantic.
The 69th Regiment, the New York National Guard, has led the New York St Patrick's Day Parade since the Civil War. "Most of them that joined the 69th, the "Fighting 69th" as they called it, were Irish-born. There aren't too many Irish-born in it at the present time but the tradition of that 69th Regiment still prevails. If you're in Leinster House in Dublin you'll see the flag of the 69th, there from when President Kennedy visited Ireland."
And there are countless other stories of decorated Irishmen, says John. "The two Donoghue brothers from Nenagh. One of them came out here and fought with the 69th Regiment, and another was with the British Army in India. The one who was here won the Medal of Honor for rescuing an officer during the Civil War, and under the exact same circumstances in India the other brother won the Victoria Cross. They're the only two known brothers to win the highest military honours in two armies. There was a memorial dedicated to Civil War hero General Michael Corcoran in Ballymote, Co Sligo a few years ago. There was also Wild Bill Donovan, who headed up the OSS, which was the forerunner of the CIA, during World War II. He was a Medal of Honor winner too."
John Dunleavy has neither All-Ireland medals nor highest military honours. His life took him in a different direction, but it is no less extraordinary for all that. This is a life. A life less ordinary. Tweet
