*Peter Banim.
A LAHINCH publican will be acting as the Grand Marshal for a St Patrick’s Day parade in Salt Lake City.
Proprietor of P Frawley Bar in Lahinch, Peter Banim will this weekend serve as the Grand Marshal for the St Patrick’s Day parade in Utah’s capital city which will be attended by 25,000 to 30,000 people.
Born in Dublin City, Peter’s grandmother Mary Roughan hailed from Spanish Point. He spent his childhood summers in Lahinch before emigrating to New York City after college where he pursued a thirty-year career in advertising and television ad sales. He worked for various advertising agencies and television networks including Mediavest, CBS Televison and Viacom’s MTV Networks. His children Stephanie and Rory grew up and still live in New York.
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🎙️Here’s our Head of News & Sport, Páraic McMahon with the details.
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Peter returned to Ireland in 2019 to live full time in Lahinch and when he word Frawley’s was going up for sale, he was anxious to acquire it. This deal was completed in advance of the Irish Open held in Lahinch in July 2019, the pub was open for nine months before the onset of COVID and it reopened in June 2021.
He is only the second owner of the popular traditional pub. P. Frawley Bar was originally owned by the Frawley family since the 1870s and Tom Frawley was the last of the family line who took over the pub from his mother in the 1960s. Tom watched his first pint settle when he was nine years old and ran the pub for many years. At the tender age of 91 years old in September 2011, he pulled his last pint and retired. Tom was famously known as ‘Ireland’s oldest barman’.
Hibernian Society President Sean Clark met and befriended Peter last summer while in Lahinch. When the theme of the Salt Lake City parade was finalised as ‘Celebrating Irish Hospitality’, Sean quickly nominated Peter as “a perfect example”, a call which was later approved at a board meeting.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Peter outlined that 25,000 to 30,000 people will attend what is the biggest St Patrick’s Day parade in Salt Lake City or Nevada. “Having lived in America for 30 years, I’d call myself an Irish man first but I had two children in New York City, it is a great honour, I’m delighted to accept it and travel out there with my partner. I’ve always been in the circles of Irish Americans in New York City, Malachy McCourt from Limerick died two days ago and I used to listen to his show, I met him twice and he was a larger than life character, the connectivity between Ireland and America is outstanding”.
He is to fly into America on Thursday night and is scheduled to complete several radio interviews with local stations on Friday. All appearances will be used to positively promote Lahinch and Co Clare, he said. “In a general sense it is a great destination, we have the Walker Cup coming up, I see it as a platform and opportunity to promote the area and the county, it is a part of the US that there is not as many Irish there, they are not as thick on the ground as they are along the East Coast, it is like a new market that we can tap into and generate into then it is good for everybody”.
Meanwhile, Sixmilebridge’s Pa Sheehan has been handed the honour of raising the flag in City Hall in Toronto for St Patrick’s Day.
