February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Along with a joking reference to his brief sartorial difficulty, O’Connor, a top executive with the Ford Motor Company, made plain that the task ahead more than suited him.
“Please don’t remember me as the person who took the longest time to put on his sash,” O’Connor jibed to the assembled audience of parade delegates and backers gathered together on a frigid evening in the ballroom of Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hotel.
The audience laughed and applauded in response.
“I am humbled and will do my best to uphold the dignity of the parade,” O’Connor said.
If there was some puzzlement in parade circles with regard to O’Connor being chosen grand marshal, and indeed some mystery as to who he was and where he had come from, the man himself went a considerable way to revealing his and his family’s story to the ballroom gathering last Wednesday.
First up, his Irish roots were not in Cork as previously reported. After hearing the news that he would lead the annual parade up Fifth Avenue, O’Connor had initiated a more in-depth search into his family’s history.
The result was a long line going back to Tipperary, one which had been duly extended across the Atlantic by the arrival of family members in New York and the birth of one David J. O’Connor in 1762.
By virtue of this coincidental occurrence, the new grand marshal’s New York family tale actually took flight with the parade itself, which first stepped out that same year.
“I am standing on the shoulders of famous Irish Americans and compared to them I am not very famous,” O’Connor said in his acceptance speech, one that was delivered with a self assurance that was doubtless useful during his ascent of the corporate ladder.
With his wife, Judith, and other family members looking on, O’Connor said that a lifetime was not measured by the breaths one took “but by the moments that take your breath away.”
O’Connor said his big day on March 17 would be like a coming home.
His parents had been married in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and after being born on 53rd Street he himself had been baptized in the cathedral.
It was great honor, he said, to come home to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, an event he had watched during his student days in the 1960s with his pals from Villanova University.
“My heart never left New York city or St. Patrick’s,” O’Connor said.
“I accept with respect for the traditions of the parade,” he added.
Referring to his wider family, O’Connor said all had “unflinching pride” in their Irish heritage.
He was looking forward to serving the parade and the faith of St. Patrick which had survived “famine, plague and the Reformation.”
O’Connor paid tribute to his predecessor as grand marshal, Cardinal Edward Egan, who was sitting on the dais to his left as he delivered his acceptance speech.
“I have big shoes to fill. Cardinal Egan is a tremendous leader of our faith,” he said.
Cardinal Egan had, in turn, praised the new grand marshal in his remarks to the room minutes before.
The cardinal said he was proud an O’Connor was following him as he himself had followed an O’Connor, a reference to the late Cardinal John O’Connor, who was grand marshal in 1995.
Egan said he would always remember the 2002 parade during which the “real heroes of our city” were recognized.
“Few minutes in my life were more emotional than when we turned around and looked down to lower Manhattan. It was a magnificent, holy experience and I shall never forget it,” the cardinal said in reference to the two minutes of silent tribute to the victims of Sept. 11.
Earlier in the evening, former Rep. Tom Manton paid tribute to the parade as “the connection between the past, present and future of the saga of the Irish in America.”
Ireland’s consul general in New York, Eugene Hutchinson, praised Egan for his “magnificent stewardship” of last year’s parade and delivered “warmest congratulations” to his successor as grand marshal.
The parade, Hutchinson said, symbolized the “strong and vibrant relationship” between New York and Ireland.
In his opening remarks, parade executive secretary Jim Barker reminded all in the room of a positive relationship between the parade and the Internal Revenue Service.
Donations to the event were tax deductible, a situation that was retroactive to 1992.
Barker also read out a letter of congratulation to the parade from Ned McGinley, national president of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.
Parade chairman John Dunleavy also alluded to last year’s 9/11 tribute. “You could hear a pin drop on Fifth Avenue,” he said.
Dunleavy, who also presented an award for 2002 best marching unit to the New York State Police, said that he hoped the parade would never again have to commemorate an event like the attack on the U.S.