June 13, 2006
Ticker-Tape Parades Posted by John Steele Gordon at 12:15 PM EST One of New York’s greatest ticker-tape parades took place 79 years ago today, when Charles Lindbergh returned (by ship) from his triumphant flight to Paris the previous month. Throwing things into the air in celebration is nothing new, of course, but New York, being New York, has long done it on a grand scale. Lindbergh’s was the twenty-first parade up Broadway to have tons of paper rained down upon it.
The first New York ticker-tape parade took place on October 29, 1886, when workers spontaneously threw ticker tape out brokers’ office windows onto to a parade honoring of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. The first person to be so honored was Admiral Dewey, hero of the Battle of Manila Bay, on September 30, 1899. Theodore Roosevelt also got one in 1910, after he returned from his great African safari.
But it was after Grover Whalen became the city’s official greeter (technically his title was chairman of the Mayor’s Reception Committee) in 1919, an office he held for the next 34 years, that ticker-tape parades came into their own. There were three parades in the fall of 1919 alone, for General Pershing (September 8), King Albert of the Belgians (October 3), and the Prince of Wales, later the Duke of Windsor, (November 18). Among the most popular honorees were aviators (Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post, and “Wrong-Way” Corrigan among them) and sports heroes such as the great golfer Bobby Jones (twice) and the American Olympic team (in 1928).
The State Department soon got into the act, requesting ticker-tape parades for visiting VIP foreigners. This resulted in parades for some people of not the slightest importance to history, such as Prince Ludovico Spado Potenziani, governor of Rome, and some whom the world wishes it could forget, such as Pierre Laval, who was premier of France when he was honored in 1931 and was shot as a traitor to France in 1945.
In more recent years, sports heroes such as the 1986 World Series champion New York Mets have remained popular, and astronauts have replaced aviators. John Glenn’s parade in 1962 set the record for ticker tape, 3,474 tons to be exact, although how that was measured is a mystery to me. Meanwhile, the foreign VIPs have moved up a notch or two in average quality, with such honorees as Pope John Paul II and Nelson Mandela.
Doubtless this great New York tradition will go on (ticker-tape parades, after all, are a lot of fun) but it has long had to do so without ticker tape. The old stock tickers that spewed out endless miles of a thin newsprint tape disappeared in 1969, when they were replaced with electronic boards.
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