Riverdale neighbors keep grassroots St. Patrick’s Day parade tradition alive

Posted Friday, March 13, 2026 3:23 pm

In lieu of traditional floats, the parade has grown to include a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus, a sanitation truck and two fire engines adorned with St. Patrick’s Day decorations.

GARY JEAN_JUSTE photos

Parade founder and director John P.L. Kelly opened the seventh annual St. Patrick’s Day extravaganza with remarks to the crowd. “The parade has grown tremendously,” he said. “It’s fueled entirely by love and enthusiasm.”

Three-year-old Katie is a familiar face at the parade, always decked out in vibrant green accessories. She and her owner, Tom Kelly, traveled up from Washington, D.C. with their family to join the holiday celebration.

Now 84, parade grand marshal Margaret Boyle is a beloved fixture at the holiday event. When asked how she first got involved, parade founder John P.L. Kelly said “the very first year, we had the piper playing and Margaret comes bounding out of her house, grabs a flag and starts waving it. She’s been with us every year since.”

Bikers with the Least of Saints Motorcycle Club — a Christian faith-based riding group — helped kick off the festivities, their bikes roaring as they traveled the route. For Riverdale resident David Ramos, head of the club’s New York chapter, the sense of neighborly spirit was the highlight of the day. “It’s so important, particularly at a time of such great division in our country, for us to band together and accept and embrace one another,” he said.

Michelle Mullen

As traditional Irish tunes blasted from bagpipes, neighbors clad in all shades of green took to Riverdale’s streets in a yearly grassroots celebration. Now in its seventh year, the March 7 St. Patrick’s Day parade was bigger and better than ever.

Founded and directed by Irish-American John P.L. Kelly, a crisis and corporate communications executive, the parade kicked off in 2020 as an early pandemic effort to bolster neighborhood morale.

The parade route runs along a narrow two-block strip, kicking off on West 151st Street and Broadway before turning west onto Fieldston Terrace and wrapping up on West 252nd Street.

“We put together this makeshift banner stapled to a stick and got a bagpiper — only about 20 neighbors, and we all marched 10 feet apart,” Kelly said, recalling the event’s humble beginnings.

-Michelle Mullen