The St. Patrick's Day Parade in Kings Park holds crown as the Island's first — and largest — Irish celebration

In Kings Park, it’s never too early to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

The community, which has hosted a parade to celebrate the Irish holiday since 2011, is the first on Long Island to march each year — selecting the first Saturday of March. It's the first of more than two dozen St. Patrick's parades on the Island in the coming weeks.

“We also have the largest parade,” said organizer Diana Brown, referring to the roster of 18 pipe and drum bands that travel from across Suffolk and Nassau counties to participate.

Fellow organizer Susan Benjes said, because it’s the Island's first parade of the season, many bands came to tune up before events closer to home this month.

The parade’s size is measured in more than just the number of people marching. A crowd spilled into Celtic Crossing Tavern at the corner of Lou Avenue and Pulaski Road more than an hour before the parade’s start at noon. From that corner down Main Street, a sea of green-clad onlookers watched the parade all the way down to the endpoint at William T. Rodgers Middle School.

The event is billed as a celebration of the Irish “cultural roots of Kings Parkers.”

“This community was mostly founded by the Irish and the Italians, and they have Columbus Day,” Brown said with a laugh.

This year’s parade honored Grand Marshal Michael Lacey, a former Kings Park Psychiatric Center employee, who arrived in the community from Ireland seven decades ago. 

“It’s a great honor,” said the 89-year-old, moments before friends pinned a sash over his wool sweater, the name of his native country knitted onto his tweed cap.

Asked if Kings Park has become as much his home as Ireland, Lacey remarked, “even more so.”

Lacey’s family roots are strong in the hamlet, Brown and Benjes said, and many of the Irish names in the community are members of his extended family. “It’s like [Six Degrees of] Kevin Bacon,” Brown said.

On this day in Kings Park, everyone is connected.

Mom and daughter Dineen and Sam Gunnell were among the more than 1,000 people to come out and celebrate. Sam was 12 when the parade launched and she’s been coming to it ever since, marching with the Kings Park Fire Department for the past four years.

“It’s just a great day with the whole town coming together,” she said.

Dineen, who helped decorate the Celtic Crossing float, described Kings Park as “very close-knit.”

“Everybody knows everybody,” she said.

And on Saturday, they were all Irish.

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.