In Dublin, Iowa, everyone is Irish one day a year

      If you travel about 10 miles west of Washington and keep a sharp eye out to the right, eventually you will come to an old building. Over the years it has been everything from a filling station to a grocery store, and at one time the bus would stop there so children could buy a piece of candy for a penny.

By By:Jeff Hunt

      If you travel about 10 miles west of Washington and keep a sharp eye out to the right, eventually you will come to an old building. Over the years it has been everything from a filling station to a grocery store, and at one time the bus would stop there so children could buy a piece of candy for a penny. The building is empty now, and it is all that remains of Dublin.

      There was a time, not long ago, a St. Patrick's Day parade was held each year in Dublin. According to the parade's first grand marshal, Washington resident Gary Murphy, the idea of a St. Patrick's Day parade came from him and his friends.

      "Several years ago, as a joke, we decided to have a parade. And we thought, 'What better place to have a St. Patrick's Day parade than Dublin?' I would be the grand marshal. We even wanted to set up a bunch of chairs so we could march the parade through the empty chairs to make the whole thing funnier."

      Murphy said the parade didn't quite work out that way.

      "Somehow word got out that we were doing the parade, and by the time we went marching down the road we had a crowd of about 100 people."

      There were only four parades. The last number of people in the audience was around 600.

      "We decided to give up the parade for two reasons," Murphy said. "The first reason was the high cost of liability insurance. The second reason was the safety factor."

      Murphy said the parade took place on the road in front of the Dublin store. "We got a lot of cooperation from the sheriff's department, but there was still a chance that someone would get hurt due to traffic."

      During the parades, the old Dublin store would be opened.

      "We cleaned the store up and sold things from it," Murphy said. "We sold [Washington County] Historical Society items and St. Patrick's Day trinkets. We even took pictures of the store and made buttons out of them to sell. All the money went to Historical Society."

      Murphy said the residents in the area liked the parade.

      "They liked the idea of someone doing something for their community. They would even join in the parade. That's one of the reasons we would have no idea how big the parade would be until the day we held it."

      Murphy added that the parade was a homecoming event for some people.

      "The parade was the first time some people came back to the area for a long time," Murphy said.

      Murphy said he was the first grand marshal of the parade. The following years there would be celebrity marshals.

      "One year we had Gov. Vilsack's wife. It was the first parade the governor's office was involved with after his election into office. The Washington Evening Journal's Dave Elder was the grand marshal one year. Kerry Hahn from the television station was the other grand marshal. We had quite a list of dignitaries."

      Murphy said one year the parade received a fly-over.

      "Two planes from the local airport flew over during the parade," Murphy said.