Susan McDonough Takes Charge of This Year’s Parade

currently the Director of Women Veterans in the Commonwealth’s Department of Veterans Services.

As the SBAWVC

by Rick Winterson

This article is about Susan McDonough and her leadership role in organizing South Boston’s 2023 St. Patrick’s/Evacuation Day Parade.

But we’ll start by reviewing some facts, along with a bit of history here and there. First of all, the Parade steps off from Broadway Station at 1 p.m. on Sunday, March 19. The Parade, which is world famous, climaxes several weeks of enjoyable activities here in South Boston. But Parades don’t just happen – they require an organization that provides funding, careful leadership, and the services of many, many volunteers. And our Parade is also highly unusual –it isn’t “official” in the usual sense. Instead, it results solely from the efforts of all those volunteers. The organization that puts on the Parade is the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council. For the rest of this article, we’ll refer to the Council as the “SBAWVC”.

Last June, Susan McDonough was elected the Commander of the SBAWVC, She was voted in by four of South Boston’s veterans’ organizations – the Fitzgerald, Perkins, Saunders, and McDonough Posts. Each of these four Posts is represented on the SBAWVC by two members. Susan is a devoted Army veteran herself and a member of the Martin F. McDonough Post #368 located on West Broadway. She served on active duty in the Army for four years, including a year in South Korea; she is

Commander, Susan is in charge of a long-standing South Boston Parade tradition. The first Parade was held back in 1901. About 75 years ago, the task of organizing the Parade was handed to South Boston’s veterans’ organizations, who then set up the SBAWVC. Following in the footsteps of John “Wacko” Hurley and Dave Falvey, Susan is providing the leadership needed to make the 2023 Parade a truly memorable event. And she’s been busy providing other veteran services already: on Saturday, December 3, Susan put on a Veterans’ Benefits event at the Lithuanian Club. But the biggest challenge for her and the SBAWVC will be the Parade next month.

Susan believes her single most important task as a leader is “to bring back respect to the South Boston community with the Parade”. Since the Parade first began more than a century ago, there have been many unfortunate events caused by spectators who misbehave. Susan has imagined how to make it a great event for a family coming in from Braintree (with two kids), while still making sure that South Boston residents are totally respected. Here are three things she has arranged already: Ten food trucks will be here to serve the crowds (Susan is trying to arrange as many as ten more); Medal of Honor/M Street Park will be set aside as a “familyfriendly” zone (with face-painting, balloon-blowing clowns, and so on); and 20 portable toilets will be set up along the Parade route (those are for the two imaginary kids from Braintree). During our interview, Susan constantly spoke words like “respect”, “community”, and “the residents”. You can tell her leadership qualities arise from being born and raised here, from attending Cardinal Cushing School, and from her military service.

With more than a month to go, here’s what the Parade looks like so far:

- It’ll be a full-length Parade and will travel the full Parade route along Broadway up to P Street, on Fourth and Fifth back to the Heights, and then down to Andrew Square.

- Over 100 units have already applied to march in the Parade. Who knows how many will actually take part? Perhaps 200?

- Susan said the Parade will have “Bands, bands, and more bands”. Think about a 3,000mile circle from the West Coast through Florida and across the Atlantic to Ireland, and you’ll have a picture of where all these bands are coming from. We will provide you with updates on the Parade as March 19 approaches. Depending upon the weather, many hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend the 2023 Parade. Spectators should plan to get here early. And please remember to respect South Boston’s residents. They are the folks who permit our St. Patrick’s/ Evacuation Day Parade to happen