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FHS, KCHS grads revive St. Pat’s Parade

March 5, 2025 by Alan Sloan

KNOXVILLE — Someone needed to step up and revive the annual Knox St. Patrick’s Parade downtown on Gay Street.

Two Farragut-area women did just that, as Chandle

Turbyville, a 1994 Farragut High School graduate, and Christy Watkins, a 1989 Knoxville Catholic High School graduate, are the revived version co-founders and parade organizers.

“We brought back the

St. Patrick’s Day Parade from a 31-year hiatus,” Turbyville said. “Our first parade was 2017.”

2025 details

The 2025 version, which begins at 1 p.m., Saturday, March 15 (two days

before St. Patrick’s Day), will be the seventh in this “revived” period, with 2020

(canceled due to COVID) and 2022 (canceled due to late-season snow) the exceptions.

Parade Grand Marshal is yet another West Knox County connection: NFL All-Pro veteran safety Harrison Smith of the Minnesota Vikings

is a former star at KCHS

(Class of 2009) before his highly successful college career at Notre Dame.

Putting on the parade,

honors

As for parade management, “We pretty much share the responsibilities as far as reaching out and finding our major sponsors, so the ones that donate the most money toward the parade goes to our charity,” said Watkins, with Catholic Charities of East Tennessee the beneficiary.

Estimating up to 10,000 parade-goers annually line either side of Gay Street, “We were voted No. 13 in the nation last year out of 200 cities” for best St. Patrick’s Day Parade, “and we had a record-breaking crowd,” Watkins said. “Visit Knoxville came up with about 5,000 to 10,000 (attendees).”

Ironically, “When we first met with the city (of Knoxville officials) in 2016, we basically planned a parade in about four months,” Watkins said. “Now, when we plan, it usually takes us almost a year, basically, to put on the parade.

“We start basically in April and May. … The city has been wonderful to work with. … Visit Knoxville has been wonderful to work with,” she added.

Motivation to revive

The motivation to bring it back?

“Chandle, myself and Chandle’s husband, Josh, were at Clancy’s, Chandle and Josh are co-owners of Clancy’s Tavern, downtown,” Watkins said. “I believe it was May of 2016, Josh was talking about how we used to have a parade in the ‘80s, and he was in it, like when he was in first grade.

“So Josh said, ‘You know what? We should bring the parade back,’” the KCHS grad added. “And I said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it. It’ll be fun.’ That’s how it started.”

Though Watkins said their task leading up to the 2017 re-birth “was fun,” she added, “We were naive and we did not realize how much work needed to go into it. I mean, lots and lots of work, lots and lots of help.”

History

The original Knox St. Patrick’s Parade, in the modern sense, began in 1981 and continued through 1986.

“This was a rich area of Irish settlers in the early 1900s — and they definitely would celebrate — but they weren’t well liked, so it wasn’t a huge celebration, so to speak,” Watkins said about yesteryear St. Patrick’s Day parades in Knoxville.

Started by Knoxville’s McLaughlin family, “They actually brought a genuine St. Patrick’s parade to Knoxville in the ‘80s,” she added.

However, the parade ended due to a death in the family, which “made it too painful to continue planning and having it, because he died a couple of months before the actual parade in ‘86,” Watkins said.

As for their Irish heritage, “My great-grandparents came over from Ireland,” Turbyville said.

As for Watkins, who was Christy Connor before marriage, “We were actually O’Connor at the time, and my grandfather dropped the ‘O’ because, like I said, the Irish weren’t really liked back in the day — but they chose this area because it was very similar, the climate and the mountains and just everything,” to Ireland.

“My mom said that there was a just a huge Irish presence” in this area, she added.

This year’s parade will begin on Gay Street at Main Street and head north, “and it will continue to the Magnolia viaduct,” said Turbyville, a commercial real estate broker. “So it will go all the way down Gay Street and end basically at Magnolia and Fifth Avenue.”

As for the parade’s features, “We anticipate to have 55 units in the parade — and each unit could be one car, a truck or it could be 50 walkers,” Turbyville said. “Each unit is very different. We also have a couple of car clubs, so that unit would maybe make up 10 cars. So if we have dancers, that would be considered one unit, but there could be 30 dancers.”

One entry of note is Knox County Dachshund Rescue. “They said they’ll have about 30 (doxies),” she added. “So sweet, so cute.”

With time remaining to enter the parade as of story deadline, “This could be our biggest participant number this year,” Watkins said.

Major sponsors are Cherokee Distributing, the Clancy family, Mike and Carol; and Connor Foundation.

WATE-TV 6 and its long-time anchor/reporter Lori Tucker is the broadcast media sponsor. “WATE livestreams it for us,” said Watkins, a pre-school children’s teacher with St. Mark’s Early Enrichment Program. “Lori Tucker is one of our emcees.”

Knoxville radio personality Kim Ansard and Tucker “will be at our VIP section, and they will be explaining and talking about the floats as they go by and the units as they go by,” Watkins said. “And Marc (Anthony, roaming reporter) will be keeping the excitement going and talking to the crowd. He’s the foot soldier, if you will, with the crowd, and they’ll be the two in the main area just describing the floats as they go by, like they do with Macy’s Thanksgiving (Day) Parade.”

Watkins and her husband, Greg Watkins, have three children, two grandchildren “and another grandchild on the way,” she said.

Turbyville and Josh have two sons.