James Quinn’s grand life includes spearheading Jaffrey’s St. Patrick’s Day parade

For one day each year, James Joseph Quinn, baptized in a small stone church in Donegal, Ireland in 1966, holds the title of grand marshal of the Jaffrey St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

The parade was Quinn’s idea, but “Kevin Hampsey took the ball and ran with it,” Quinn said. And now the parade is the pinnacle of Shamrock Week – a celebration that features Irish film, music, dance and socials, all produced and hosted by The Park Theatre.

Quinn moved to the Monadnock region in 2014, after 15 years working construction in New York City. The nearly six-foot tall, blue-eyed Irishman brought with him the love and luck of the Irish and a thought inspired by New York’s historic green parade.

In New York, 2 million spectators line Fifth Avenue to watch the 2½-mile St. Patrick’s Day Parade. When Quinn moved to Jaffrey, he thought, “Why not a St. Paddy’s Parade here?”

Jaffrey now boasts the second-largest St. Patrick’s parade in New Hampshire, after Manchester. According to Quinn, last year, more than 2,500 spectators watched the parade.

Irish-proud and a voracious reader and history buff, Quinn envisioned more than a parade, and has not given up his dream of an Irish cultural and heritage center, a hub where people will gather to share, teach, learn and celebrate Irish music, dance, Gaelic football, crafts, history and literature.

Quinn is storybook Irish, the second child, after his big sister Mary, born to William and Angela Quinn. Next came Thomas, Bernadette, Liam, Derek, Declin, Stephen, Martin and Ann. Another brother died as an infant.

The family prayer book sat on the kitchen windowsill until, each evening, “Daddy picked up the book, switched off the TV, and we all knelt to say the Rosary. I knelt at an old chair, peeking through the chair spindles, watching the beads slowly move, as my Daddy massaged each bead between his fingers as we prayed the decades.”

English was spoken at home, and the children studied Gaelic at school. Every school day started with prayers, both in Latin and Gaelic.

“We didn’t have much, but we had enough, and Mom made sure we were clean,” Quinn said. “I can still feel her one hand under my chin, and the other scrubbing a rough washcloth all over my face.”

The farm fed the large family; extra eggs, milk, hay, and potatoes were driven to town and bartered for groceries. Quinn remembers bringing eggs to town with his brother Thomas, stacking them on the grocery shelves.

“It was before there were egg cartons. We’d place them carefully, a little pile here and another there,” he said.

The two oldest boys left school to work the farm, after their father went to work in the local grain mill to bring home money.

“Thomas is a year younger than me, but you’d think we were twins the way our mother dressed us. We were in the same grade when we both cut out of school. I was 11 and Thomas 10.”

The younger Quinn children all finished school, and followed their dreams. Among the Quinn siblings are painters, a farmer, a psychologist, an attorney, medical doctors and an accountant.

“Our youngest is Ann. She is a renowned artist. Her paintings hang all over the world,” Quinn said with obvious pride.

Thomas continues to run the farm, which the Quinns have tended for three generations. He has kept the land open, and Angela Quinn, 79, keeps the home fires burning for her children and their families to return when they can. William Quinn died two years ago, age 96.

James Quinn calls his mother nearly every day. When visiting her at Christmas and for summer holidays, he sleeps in his childhood bedroom, the one he shared for more than two decades with his brother Thomas.

“It will always be home,” he mused.

Quinn’s grandfather bought the Presbyterian Church rectory, built from stone in the 1600s., from the Rev. Blueglass in 1934 for 800 pounds. It became the Quinn homestead. The children bunked in three rooms, their parents in another and their grandfather had a bed in the parlor.

Reflecting on how he ended up in the Monadnock region, Quinn began, “My Daddy loved America. I grew up hearing his stories of living in NYC and traveling the country in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. He came over with his best friend. I remember a photo — slicked back hair, short-sleeve T-shirt and pressed crease in his chinos, and dark sunglasses. He looked sharp.”

Tapping a nicotine-tinged finger to his temple, Quinn said, ” He sowed a seed up here, made me dream about it. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I think it led me to finish out his dream.”

William Quinn meant to live in America forever, but returned home just 2½ years later when his mother died.

“It was pure guilt,” Jimmy Quinn said. “He packed up and left his pride and joy, a 1957 Chevy convertible outside the Donegal Bar, in Queens where he first bartended and lived. He left the keys in the ignition, along with his American dreams.”

Once back in Donegal, William used the money he’d saved to install the first and only telephone for miles around. It was a crank phone that patched callers to a switchboard. For years, it was the only phone around and everyone came to the Quinn farmhouse to use it.

During that year’s potato harvest, 17-year-old Angela Gibson picked potatoes beside her classmates on the Quinn farm. Every year, school closed for two weeks for the October harvest. William Quinn was overseeing the workers and frequently stopped to pull potatoes beside Angela to add to her pile.

“He paid more attention to me than the other girls. I didn’t mind. He wore a white baseball cap, like nothing we ever saw. He was so handsome,” Angela said.

The couple married within the year, on June 6, 1964. Angela was 18.

James Quinn was 32 years old, tired of the farm and driving trucks, when he finally told his mother “I just have to go.” He packed his bags and boarded a plane to America. Upon landing in New York, Quinn visited the Donegal Pub where his father had left his convertible 40 years before.

“As I was introduced around, a man took hold of me and said, “I was your father’s best friend. We came to America together.”

Jimmy Quinn’s work ethic and ability to learn quickly helped him flourish in the construction field. His days began at 4 a.m. with a one-hour, 15-minute drive from his Bronx apartment to his Manhattan worksites where he honed his skills in excavation, carpentry, masonry, metal work, indoor and outdoor restoration and new construction.

Quinn witnessed the Twin Towers fall; he actually saw the second plane hit. He helped rebuild after Hurricane Sandy. There was always so much work. So Quinn worked and saved money. Time off was used for visits back home, and adventures on his Harley.

When Quinn’s father returned to New York for the first time since flying home for his mother’s funeral in 1961, father and son posed for a photo in front of James’s new Harley.

“I put 90,000 miles on that bike,” he said.

Quinn thought of his father as he roared across the Golden Gate Bridge, along Route 66 and to Key West. Down the California coast, and as he sat on the Hoover Dam.

“I rode through all 48 states, the entire lower 48. Ah, that was something,” he said.

As Quinn neared 50 years old, he began itching to leave the city. His commute was worse than ever. His van was repeatedly broken into, and once impounded for days after getting a flat tire.

“I didn’t have any more fight left in me, to deal with those kinds of things,” he said.

He’d started S & C Painting in New York and brought the business with him when he moved to Jaffrey.

“Best move I ever made,” he said. “I’d saved enough money in New York to buy a house here. And all the old houses and churches here are beautiful, and I’ve enjoyed working on many of them.”

Quinn loves his work and talks about it at length, but when asked what he does for fun since selling his Harley, Quinn went quiet. He stood up and excused himself for a smoke.

When he returned, he said, “I think my fun days were over in my 20s. I used to go dancing every Friday night. We looked forward to it all week. We put on our Sunday best; everyone looked sharp. There was always live music. Even the smallest pub had a dance floor. I love a jive, a waltz. We went to dance, not to get drunk. I miss that. Wish we had that here.”

“I would spit shine my shoes for a Friday night dance, again.”