A well-known Killarney woman was given the honour of being grand marshal at this year’s St Patrick’s Day parade in Baton Rouge, the state capital of Louisiana.
Noreen Coffey, a retired teacher who worked in St Oliver’s National School in Ballycasheen, travelled to the US with her sister, Mary O’Rourke, to experience the festivities and celebrations of the Irish Americans on March 17 in what is the biggest annual parade in Baton Rouge.
She had a very busy schedule, with an interview on TV station WBRZ2 Baton Rouge among her duties.
Noreen said it was the experience of a lifetime, though her arm was aching after 90 minutes of waving and throwing beads to the crowd during the parade, in keeping with the Mardi Gras tradition.
The parade tradition in Baton Rouge goes back to 1986, when Pat Shingleton started a walking parade and the wearing of the green. In 2002, Ivor Quigley, who lived in Killarney on his retirement, became the first native of Ireland to invited to be grand marshal.
The Killarney connection was established in 2005 when Noreen’s brother, Denis, and Junior Finnegan were invited to take up the task with more Killarney folk, Tim O’Brien, Mike Leahy and Michael Rosney, all taking up the grand marshal role in the years that followed.
This year marked the 40th anniversary of the wearing of the green celebrations and so to mark the occasion, Noreen worked with St Oliver’s teacher Noel O’Sullivan to pen a song especially for the occasion. They rejigged the 1798 song The Wearing of the Green, telling the story of how the parade in Baton Rouge grew from strength to strength.
To add to the Killarney connections, the cover of the brochure produced for St Patrick’s Day in Baton Rouge featured St Mary’s Cathedral. Katie Shingleton, daughter of Baton Rouge parade founder Pat Shingleton, was married in the cathedral in Killarney.
Noreen managed to take time to play a few holes of golf in the local courses while in America, playing TPC Louisiana, the course on which Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy won the 2024 Zurich Classic.
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