The next grand marshal of the Morris County St. Patrick’s Parade won’t have to venture far for tips on how to handle the prestigious assignment.
John Hyland’s mom, Kathleen Ginty Hyland, led the 1998 parade.
A Morristown native who still lives here with his wife Kristin and children Kieran, Patric and Kelsey, John Hyland will follow in his mother’s footsteps on March 14, 2015, announced Willie Quinn, a past grand marshal and spokesman for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade of Morris County Inc.
John, a founder and managing partner of the Private Advisor Group, may need some coaching to maintain a slow marching pace. He has run the New York Marathon and completed 11 Ironman triathlons, including two world championships.
Those feats are all the more impressive considering some were accomplished after his 2010 diagnosis with acute leukemia.
Coincidentally, he was a prodigious fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society prior to becoming ill; a beloved aunt had died from a form of the disease. John’s illness is not considered hereditary.
He organized Morristown’s Light the Night fund-raising event, which has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he recruited a donor who gave more than $1.4 million to the nonprofit society.
In interviews, John has credited his training regimen with helping him endure the rigors of chemotherapy. The experience has profoundly changed his outlook.
“Just day-to-day things, that fact that you wake up in your own home with your wife and children around you, is a huge blessing,” he told a trade publication in 2011.
John has served as parade treasurer for more than a decade, and was finance chairman in 1999 and 2000.
“The Morris County St. Patrick’s Parade Trustees are proud and honored to have such a distinguished Irishman lead the St. Patrick’s Day parade down South Street in Morristown on Saturday March 14th, 2015,” Willie Quinn said in a statement.
SCENES FROM THE 2014 MORRIS ST. PATRICK’S PARADE
