By Stephen Malone
Last Sunday Queens celebrated our Irish heritage with the St Patrick’s Day for All Parade through Sunnyside. It was an opportunity for us to show our support for an Irish and Queens institution that is under threat: New York City’s horse carriages.
Many Irish immigrants settled in Queens, and our families remain there today. Our parents and grandparents brought more than their families across the Atlantic. They brought their food, their culture, their humor, and their values, including the special connection between the Irish and their horses.
In County Louth, my father was a blacksmith, like his father, like his grandfather. He built the streets of his village with teams of horses. In New York, he kept that homeland tradition alive, fixing carriages, shoeing horses, and finally driving a carriage in Central Park.
The horse carriages have given so much to Queens’ Irish. Many of us got jobs right off the boat in this industry and were able to put down roots, buy a house and raise a family. When we were able to invest in a carriage and horse of our own, we had a job-creating small business that we could pass down to our children, as my father did. In the succeeding years, Queens has become more diverse, and immigrants from Central America, the Caribbean, and Asia have joined the carriage trade.
If Mayor De Blasio gets his way, Queens and New York’s Irish will lose this dear tradition. Jackson Height’s Council Member, Daniel Dromm, has unthinkably sided against his constituents and sponsored the ban in the City Council.
Thankfully, many elected officials want to keep these family-supporting jobs alive. Queens Council Members Crowley, Constantinides, Lancman, Koslowitz, Miller, Weprin, and Ulrich have led the opposition that has thus far stalled the ban in the City Council.
Council Members Koo, Wills, Ferreras, Richards, and Van Bramer, whose Sunnyside was the site for Sunday’s parade, have inexplicably remained silent.
Queens’ carriage drivers marched to celebrate our Irish roots and remind our elected officials what the horse carriages mean to our neighborhoods. We are also proud that Queens hosts the city’s inclusive St. Paddy’s parade, which is open to all: men and women, gay and straight, Irish or not. Like our industry, St. Patrick’s Day for All honors its Irish roots by welcoming the diversity that is today’s New York.
For me, the parade is a homecoming. I grew up in Sunnyside, which has always had a strong tie to the carriage industry. Hundreds of immigrants who grew up working with horses settled here, and St. Patrick’s for All is a major event for my parents and all the carriage drivers who still live in the neighborhood.
Walter McCaffrey, who represented Sunnyside in the City Council during the 1980s, was as good a friend that a carriage driver could have. He taught us how to advocate for ourselves at City Hall and stand up to wealthy Manhattanites who know nothing about horses and have long hated our business.
I hope today’s elected officials will remember the legacy of Councilman McCaffrey and support their constituents’ jobs and the carriage horses that have supported Queens families for so many decades.
Stephen Malone
Central Park carriage driver
Sunnyside
