There is a popular Irish ditty that says, “As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point the wrong way.”
After two years of splinters, Huntsville’s favorite parade is back!
The 45th annual Ellen McAnelly Memorial St. Patrick’s Day Parade is this Saturday, March 12 at 11 a.m. in downtown Huntsville. Every pub, grub and retail shop along the parade route will be offering St. Patrick’s Day specials.
The parade’s presenting sponsor, Straight to Ale Brewing at Campus 805, is holding the official after-parade party. It is a family-friendly event with live music, games, drink and food specials.
Organized by the Irish Society of North Alabama, the community has deeply missed the more than 90 groups that participate every year including St. Patrick, a long-time parade tradition.
Ellen McAnelly moved to Huntsville in 1977 from Galway, Ireland. She was Huntsville’s first Irish restauranteur opening Finnegan’s Pub on Memorial Parkway to introduce authentic Irish tradition, culture, food, and hospitality to North Alabama.
In 1978, she introduced the first of what would eventually be called the Huntsville St. Patrick’s Day Parade. That first year, it was a short southerly route along the west side frontage road of Memorial Parkway, ending at Finnegan’s.
In 1978, there were 18 people in the parade and almost no audience.
In 2019, prior to the pandemic, the parade drew 1,500 participants and thousands of onlookers along the downtown Huntsville route, bringing a pot o’ gold to merchants in its path!
There will be specialty car groups, birthday celebrations, local companies and organizations, a band, horses, floats, pirates, firetrucks, and the staple of every parade since 1979, the Leprechaun on a Trike.
“It’s hard to believe it has been three years since this parade has marched through the streets of downtown Huntsville,” said parade director Lisa Bollinger. “It’s such a wonderful day for the Irish, those who are Irish for the day, and for the community.”
For the first time in Huntsville parade history, the official Huntsville Fire and Rescue Pipe Band will lead the parade.
Members of the O’Beirne Family, which has been part of Huntsville’s St. Patrick’s Day celebrations since it kicked off at Finnegan’s Pub in 1978, will be Grand Marshals.
Twenty-one-year-old Parade Queen Madi Brown and her court, princesses McKinley Oliver (Connacht Province), Leia Hardison (Leinster Province), Rose Hardison (Munster Province) and Mary Bailey (Ulster Province) will each lead their province section.
The parade begins at Lot K on the corner of Woodson and Holmes and goes through downtown Huntsville, stopping briefly for the most anticipated event of the parade, the Blessing of the Flags at St. Mary of the Visitation Catholic Church on Jefferson Street is said to have the “wow factor.”
The parade will head south on Washington Street through Eastside Square, and north on Church Street past the Huntsville Museum of Art, between West and East Big Spring Park.
Woodson Street between Clinton and Holmes avenues will be closing after 10 a.m. Saturday morning.
Click here to download the Parade Spectator Guide with a route map and parking information.
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