James Boyle, a banker who passed away at the age of 43, will be honored along with 15 others as Honorary Grand Marshals at the 2011 Bronx St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which kicks off at noon at the corners of Lafayette and E. Tremont avenues on Sunday, March 13.
Boyle would always walk from his home on Hollywood Avenue, often with his young children, to watch the Parade march down E. Tremont Avenue, and the other marshals have family and friends who share similar remembrances of their loved ones at the parade.
Geraldine Boyle said that James always enjoyed attending the parade, particularly in the early years when it was first started by the Throggs Neck Benevolent Society.
“He was very proud to be Irish. We took a three-week vacation in Ireland in August,” Geraldine Boyle said of her husband, who recently passed away unexpectedly.
“We used to go to Ireland every two years until the kids were born.”
Also being honored as honorary grand marshals are Gerald Baumann Sr., Nora Browne, Joann Duffy Collins, William Donovan, James Hooks, Joanne Jackson, John “Jack” Kelly, Mary Sullivan Koester, Frank McSherry, Anna Mullins, Briget O’Farrell, Joseph O’Grady, Gerard Shadwick, Michael Tierney and John Walker.
John Walker’s daughter Lisa Walker, said that her father, a beloved figure of the Edgewater Park community and former deputy warden in the New York City Department of Corrections, would have been very thrilled by the honor.
“He was very proud to come from a big Irish family with lot of cousins and a large extended family,” Walker said. “He was always there at the parade.”
Honorary grand marshal Joanne Duffy Collins, who passed away in May 2010 after a 15-year fight with breast cancer, is remembered by her sister Pat Duffy for her “quick Irish wit and hilarious sense of humor.”
After growing up on Harding Avenue and attending St. Frances de Chantal School and Preston High School in the 1970s, Duffy Collins went to Grace Business Institute and ultimately worked for the Bronx D.A.s office and at an investment bank.
She then went onto a career as a nurse after caring for her elderly parents and three children, and found fulfillment in enriching the lives of others.
“Joanie lived life in God’s eyes,” her sister remembered. “She cared more for others, than of herself.”
