By: Denise Foley

Michael Emmett McCarron was born in Donegal around the time the famed Easter Uprising in Dublin set Ireland on the path to independence. In fact, McCarron was born in Ireland because of the Easter Uprising.

His mother and father had emigrated to the United States in 1892. But in 1916, when she was “in the family way,” McCarron’s mother left her home in the Swampoodle section of Philadelphia to tend to a sick relative in Ireland.

“After the Easter uprising started, the civil war followed in 1917,” says McCarron. “My mother was trying to get back to this country but was having a little trouble at that time. So I was born there. When we were able to come back to this country, I about a year old.”

This “accidental Irishman,” now 90, has been named Grand Marshal of the 2007 Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade, scheduled for Sunday, March 11. That’s fitting, because as co-founder of the local fraternal group, The Men of Killarney, McCarron marched in the parade for decades.

And for 46 years, he was a member (now emeritus) of the St. Patrick’s Day Observance Association, the group that every year plans the second oldest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the country. “I think it’s a great honor,” says McCarron, who was general foreman in charge of construction for SEPTA before he retired in 1979. “It’s a great organization.”

McCarron will be honored and “sashed” at a luncheon on Thursday, March 8, at the Doubletree Hotel at Broad and Locust in Philadelphia. And you’ll see him in the parade the following Sunday with his granddaughter, just ahead of the cardinal, the governor, the lieutenant governor, and the mayor—which is as it should be.