Queens heroes honored at ticker tape parade

Queens Nurse Sandra Lindsay was the first of many pandemic heroes honored at the city’s ticker-tape parade on Wednesday. Eagle photo by Liam Quigley

By Liam Quigley

With thousands of cheering onlookers lining police barricades, Sandra Lindsay, a Queens critical care nurse and the first person in the United States to receive the COVID-19 vaccine outside of a trial setting, was chauffeured up Broadway Wednesday afternoon.

She was the first of thousands of New York City’s “hometown heroes” honored in a ticker tape parade that attracted crowds that would have sent chills down the spine of the average New Yorker just last year.

First responders, health care providers and all manner of essential workers were recognized for their continued labor despite government-mandated lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic in the face of the very real threat of death.

“Today means everything,” Lindsay told the Eagle. “It’s so humbling just to be here, and to represent health care workers.”

The virus hit Queens especially hard, with major hotspots developing early on in the pandemic. Many of those who lived in Queens were frontline workers and city employees who had no choice but to return to work.

Mr. and Mrs. Met, normally relegated to cheering on the first place ball club, cheered on pandemic heroes in Manhattan on Wednesday, July 7, 2021. Eagle photo by Liam Quigley

Nearly a quarter of New York bus and subway workers had at some point contracted the virus. All told, more than 30 thousand New Yorkers died, many of whom were not able to conduct their work from home.

The parade seemed to signal not only a return to a New York where a massive crowd might be more of an aggravation rather than a horror, but a wider recognition of the type of labor the city values and the people who perform it.

“It definitely sends a message of rebirth. And nobody does it like New York,” said Edward Grayson, a Ridgewood-native who became commissioner of the city’s sanitation department as New York grappled with some of the worst months of the pandemic.

Queens’ own Sanitation Commissioner Edward Grayson was among those celebrated during Wednesday’s parade. Eagle photo by Liam Quigley

“In addition to the sanitation worker, utility worker, and the nurses, look at food delivery, look at people that were bringing things home for us so that we could survive,” he added.

Notably absent were members of the city’s EMS service, who skipped the parade to show their displeasure over long-delayed contract negotiations and low starting salaries.

Ricky Zhu, a Flushing resident who worked with the city’s test and trace program throughout the pandemic, said that the parade was a meaningful recognition of health care workers that wouldn’t have been possible without a vaccine. Queens led the charge toward the city’s reopening, with at least 62-percent of residents having received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“When you’re quarantined, you don’t really see that gratitude,” Zhu said. “There’s more love in this city than hate. There’s more appreciation than ignorance. Having a parade like this shows that everyone is grateful.”