New book details parade history

by Patrick Thomas

The South Side Irish St. Patrick’s Day Parade may never return, but its spirit will forever be chronicled in a new book.

Bridget Houlihan Kennedy’s “Chicago’s South Side Irish Parade” (Arcadia, $21.99) captures the parade throughout its 31-year history with a collection of pictures, beginning with a march of 17 children around Talman and Washtenaw avenues to the enormous sea of 300,000 parade fans surrounding Western Avenue.

Houlihan Kennedy will be on hand at the South Side Irish St. Patrick’s Day Family Fest at the Beverly Arts Center on Saturday, March 13, to sell and sign copies of her book.

“So many great things came out of the parade,” Houlihan Kennedy said. “I hope this book is a great memento of what it was and how much people loved it.”

For her first book, Houlihan Kennedy, 32, a freelance writer and full-time mom, compiled 200 photographs from parade committee members, parade fans and neighborhood families, showing how they marched and how they celebrated the annual holiday.

Raised in Wilmette, Houlihan Kennedy is still through and through a South Side Irish girl. She was 2 when her parents, Dan, a former state representative, and Mary Alice, a teacher, moved the family of six kids from their North Beverly house to the north suburbs. Houlihan Kennedy attended New Trier High School and John Carroll University and began writing for various Chicago publications. Although removed from the family’s beloved South Side, the Houlihans came back to visit her grandmother, Alice O’Leary Loftus, and other family on parade day year after year.

“My family never missed the parade. Rain or shine, we were there. It was this great family staple we always had every March. We really enjoyed seeing each other,” Houlihan Kennedy said.

So much so that after years of attending the parade and attending family house parties every year, Houlihan Kennedy decided to put together a book on the parade. In September 2008, she reached out to Arcadia with the idea.

“A friend of mine had written a book for Arcadia about Bosnian Americans in Chicagoland, and I thought it was a great book. I was looking at Arcadia’s books, and I noticed they had two books on Chicago’s Christmas parades but nothing on the South Side Irish Parade,” she said. “I was kind of surprised because Arcadia’s message is that these are neighborhood books.”

Arcadia decided to publish Houlihan Kennedy’s book. She contacted local churches and placed notices in bulletins requesting parade fans to submit pictures, and she also reached out to parade committee members, including the Hendry and Coakley families, who helped launch the first parade in 1979.

“The Hendry Family and Coakley Family were pretty generous in helping me out. A lot of it was tracking them down to tell me how this began, what were the conversations about at first, and lots of good hard work to get to the beginning of things,” she said. “They pointed out it that it wasn’t just them, but it was also the Hayes Family, the Hughes Family and the Rafferty Family.”

All those families led to more pictures and recurring themes throughout the years of celebrating the parade. From the first parade of 17 children to last year’s enormous crowd, there was a consistent message, Houlihan Kennedy said.

“The kids you see in the pictures in 1979 are just like the kids in 2009. They have the same expressions of joy on their faces,” she said.

But months after she began collecting photos, a major twist in the story occurred. The parade was cancelled. Houlihan Kennedy said she never thought about halting publication or rearranging the book.

“It was such a fluke,” she said. “It gives me a last chapter and an end to the book. It gives me a bow to put on the book. I heard rumors that it was a possibility, but I didn’t think it was going to happen. It’s the first year the parade won’t be around, but I think people still plan on marching down Western.”

Houlihan Kennedy, who lives with her husband, Michael, and their 9-month-old son Donny in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the North Side, said she understands both arguments about whether to return the parade. While she doesn’t lean to one side or the other in her book, she said all can agree on one fact.

“The parade touched so many lives,” she said.

The book is available on Amazon and at Bookie’s, 2419 W. 103rd St., or by sending an e-mail to southsideirishparadebook@ gmail.com.

This is part of the March 10, 2010 online edition of The Beverly Review.

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