RUMSON – Chalk it up to the Luck of the Irish or maybe the memory of Mike Larkin.
Despite the harsh weather we’ve experienced this winter, Sunday was an uncharacteristically mild and sunny day as hundreds marched and thousands viewed the third annual St. Patrick’s Day parade.
“Thankfully, this year the weather was great,” observed Mark Bernstein, a Barnegat bagpiper with the Ocean County Emerald Society, which marched in the parade. Thankfully, he added, it was a much better day than on March 1, when he and society and he participated in the Belmar parade, with snow and then sleet falling on the crowds. “This is much better,” he said of the weather.
“I think Mike Larkin is taking care of the weather,” offered Jan O’Reilly, a member of the parade’s organizing board of trustees.
Larkin, 71, Sea Bright, to whom the parade was dedicated, had first got the ball rolling on organizing the parade nearly four years ago and had overseen it until his sudden death on Dec. 31 2014.
“He produced an incredible parade,” that first year, said Mayor John Ekdahl of Larkin’s effort. And one “that will only grow with time.”
And it has. The parade route along the approximately one-mile length, even with the mounds of snow, held what Police Chief Scott Paterson estimated to be between 8,500-9,500. “It was definitely bigger than last year. It was a good crowd,” Paterson said on Monday about the crowd’s size.
Parade organizers have been saying last year’s event had approximately 7,000 viewers along the route.
— By John Burton. Slideshow photos by Tina Colella / Two River Times and contributor Mark McDevitt
