Red, White, Blue Kirkwood Tradition: The Kids' Parade

It all started because Lucy Walsh’s dad wanted to sleep in a little later one Fourth of July morning.

So when the kids started in with that familiar summertime refrain of  “we’re bored,” John Walsh came up with a spur-of-the-moment idea that bought him a few extra minutes of peace that holiday morning almost 70 years ago.

“We’ll have a parade,” he announced, sending the kids outdoors to gather their friends and decorate their bikes.

“There were probably 15 of us and we marched up to a Carpenter’s drug store on Kirkwood Road that had a soda fountain,” Lucy Walsh recalled. “Daddy bought us ice cream cones and we marched back down the street.”

Thus began a red, white and blue Kirkwood tradition that has grown so big that now hundreds of kids and adults arrive at the corner of East Argonne Drive and Gilbert Street every Fourth of July at 10 a.m.

“They just show up,” said neighbor Ron Gaus, who says he counted 800 participants last year. “It’s kids on bikes, parents and grandparents pulling kids in wagons. They’re all decorated. It’s just a weird parade and everybody has a great time.”

While some neighbors sit in lawn chairs along the streets to watch, others ride bikes, steer scooters, pull wagons or push strollers along the parade route.

The current owners of the Walsh family home – Tim and Patty Clegg – love the holiday ritual so much they willingly treat as many as 750 people to popsicles after the parade.

“It’s a great tradition,” Patty Clegg said. “It’s Norman Rockwell all the way. You do get a shiver.”

For the Cleggs, this will be their 10th year to host. Another family that owned the house before them did the same for about a dozen years. Before that, the Walsh family kept the tradition going for about 45 years.

But this Monday the festivities will kick off for the first time with neither the patriarch nor the matriarch of the parade. John Walsh, a former city judge in Kirkwood, died a number of years ago; his wife, Lucy Ann, died in October at age 97.

Last summer, Lucy Ann Walsh led the parade in a bus provided by the nursing home where she lived. It carried several of her friends and family members and moved slowly enough that old neighbors could hop on to say hello.

“She was thrilled,” said her daughter, Lucy, who is 73 and lives in Kirkwood. Lucy and her four siblings and their children and grandchildren still gather every year for the parade – some coming from as far away as Virginia and Florida.

“I just can’t believe how big it’s gotten,” she said.

No one is quite sure what year was the first, but Lucy Walsh guesses it was 1942. The parade route has had to expand through the years to accommodate the growing number of participants — now it usually goes west on Argonne Drive, north on Taylor Avenue, east on Jefferson Avenue, south on Woodlawn Avenue, and back west on Argonne.

Patty Clegg said that when she and her husband bought the house, continuing the tradition was part of the sale agreement. The house also came with a small handwritten sign that they post in their yard each year: “Kids’ Parade July 4th 10 a.m.”

And while the parade always ends with an icy treat for all, it must begin with the Pledge of Allegiance.

“My father used to say, the Fourth of July is not just a holiday to go swimming or to a picnic,” Lucy Walsh said. “It’s to celebrate our country. So I really like that they still do the Pledge of Allegiance. If there are 40 kids out of 800 that get it, that’s OK.”