Trips to St. Patrick’s Day Mass, parade in New York remembered

Mike Dyer of St. Patrick Parish in Elkhorn, a retired New York City police officer, has been marching in the St. Patrick Day’s Parade in New York City every year since 1982.

A few years after beginning that tradition, he added the annual St. Patrick’s Day Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

"It’s the highlight," Dyer said of the Mass. "It’s very powerful, to be at that place, on that day."

Dyer, who has family roots in Ireland, retired from the police force in 1985 and now is an attorney. He has captured several of his trips in photos, and he shared a photo this year with the Catholic Voice of him and a fellow retired New York City police officer, George Ritter of Massapequa, N.Y., with Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, who presided at the March 17 Mass.

The photo and Dyer’s story triggered an idea for reaching and involving more readers – with a new feature at the Catholic Voice called, "Faces and Places." It will showcase on the newspaper website this and other select photos people of the archdiocese send to the Catholic Voice as they visit people or places important to the faith outside of the Archdiocese of Omaha.

The feature will rely on submissions and be selected for quality and news value. And a prompt to look for new photos will appear periodically in our print edition on the Faith & Family page, the second issue of each month. Just watch for the logo that accompanies this story.

Dyer’s photo, for example, can be found at catholicvoicomaha.com, on the homepage under a special tab titled, "Faces and Places."

To participate, people can send photos of 500 kilobytes or larger, along with contact information including name and telephone number, to tcvomaha.org. Please include information about the photos, explaining who, what, where, when, how and why.

"Faces and Places" … it’s just another way to celebrate the faith, family, and the faith-filled people of this archdiocese.