Cead Mile Failte!
One Hundred Thousand Welcomes!
Welcome to the home page of the Irish American Club of Kalamazoo!
The Irish American Club of Kalamazoo is a non-profit 501 [c] [3] organization that is the proud sponsor of the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade in downtown Kalamazoo and the annual Kalamazoo Irish Festival.
Downtown Kalamazoo – St. Patrick’s Day Parade
The club is happy to announce that our 22nd annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade will take place on Saturday, March 16 and our Grand Marshal this year is Mayor David Anderson. The parade will step off at 11:00 am on S. Burdick street and follow our usual route down to Cedar street. We are now accepting applications to participate and are looking for sponsors to help defray our costs. If you are interested please contact us at margarets74@gmail.com
Hooley for Healing – Please plan to join us on March 16th after the parade at Rugger’s Up & Under in honor of Betsy Valentine and Sara Dawson
A Hooley is an Irish Party. Last March on Saturday, March 11 after the parade we had a Hooley and fund raiser for Sarah House and Rita Saltarelli, 2 local women dealing with cancer and their related costs. Sarah is travelling back and forth to the Mayo Clinic and Rita is travelling to Houston to the Anderson Cancer Center for treatments. The owners of Rugger’s Up & Under opened their doors early just for us and we had about 425 people come to party with us and helped us to raise over $14,000.00 through their generous donations and aggressive bidding of 40 different great items in our silent auction. We had music from the Bog Road, step dancers from the Quinn School of Irish Dance, a kilt contest, and some kid’s games and prizes, and some special menu items and drink specials. Overall a resounding success and we’re already looking forward to doing it again next year on March 16th . We hope you will join us and help us do this all over again.
Next Club Meeting – Thursday, April 4th at Travelers Craft BBQ & Whiskey Bar. 5225 Portage Rd. near the airport
Dinner & social hour from 5:30 and meeting will start at 7:00 with entertainment to follow
T SHIRTS – We have some 20th anniversary special edition T shirts left over from the festival for sale for $20.00. If you are interested, please contact us and we’ll make arrangements to get 1 to you.
See Our Events Page for More Upcoming events!