George Anderson, Past Grand Marsh at St. Patrick’s Day Parade, March16, 2025

So my name is George Anderson, and I'm the past Grand Marshal from 2017 here in the Mid-Hudson St. Patrick's Parade. And we're all here today to celebrate our 40, I think it's our 43rd annual parade. And our 2025 Grand Marshal is William Coffey, and he is from our Ancient Order of Hibernians division. And we are all here to celebrate Irish history and culture and our Catholic faith. Okay, wonderful. So tell me a brief introduction of your role as Grand Marshal each year. What does it mean to our Chinese community? Well, so each year someone from the Irish community here in Orange County is selected to be the Grand Marshal. And usually it's a result of your contributions to the community over your time here living in Orange County. And I think to the Chinese community, you know, celebrating diversity is what we try to do here and celebrate our Irish heritage. And so we celebrate all heritages by celebrating our own heritage. Okay, so what's your message to our Chinese community? Like a welcome? Oh, well, we welcome you here to Orange County. We're glad you are here. And we know that you've been coming to the parade now for several years. We have a very large contingent that does some traditional Chinese dancing as a part of the parade. So we celebrate that. It's wonderful to have members of our Chinese community here.