NYC to hold massive ticker-tape parade for doctors and nurses next month
New York City will hold a massive ticker-tape parade in Lower Manhattan on July 7 to thank the city’s doctors and nurses along with other “hometown heroes” who helped get the Big Apple through the pandemic, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday.
“It’s going to be example of the great tradition of ticker-tape parades, a ticker-tape parade up the Canyon of Heroes,” said the mayor.
The parade route has seen Charles Lindbergh, Winston Churchill, the Apollo 11 astronauts, Pope John Paul II as well as the Mets, Yankees, Rangers and Giants championship teams lauded with ticker tape or its replacement, shredded office paper, streaming from the towers lining it.
“It’s time for the parade to celebrate our hometown heroes. We’re always going to remember the pain and the tragedy of COVID. No one is going to ever forget those we lost and what families are still going through, but we need a day to celebrate the heroism of everyday New Yorkers,” de Blasio said during his daily press conference.
“I look forward, really look forward to being a part of that moment and thanking all of our heroes who saw us through [the pandemic].”
De Blasio’s announcement comes as a promise kept for comments he made in April 2020, when he vowed that when the pandemic was at its end, the city would hold a parade to thank health care workers and first responders who put their lives on the line to help sick New Yorkers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I said the first parade back, the first true large parade in New York City, will be one to celebrate the heroes of the fight against COVID, our health care heroes, who were extraordinary and need to be remembered for the ages, our first responders are essential workers,” de Blasio said Monday of the parade down Broadway.
“The people who kept us alive, the people kept the city going no matter what, we are going to hold a parade to honor them, to thank them, to celebrate.”
The announcement for the date of the event, which will be similar to those thrown for championship-winning professional sports teams, also comes as Big Apple parades have gone virtual, been put on hold or held at reduced capacities for more than a year.
