Tom Finnigan (Enterprise file photo — Peter Crowley)

SARANAC LAKE — Tom Finnigan has been named grand marshal of this year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in Saranac Lake.

The parade’s grand marshal is selected each year by a vote of its former grand marshals.

Finnigan will lead the parade from the Saranac Lake Post Office to the Harrietstown Town Hall at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 15.

“I was very, very surprised,” said Finnigan. “I was shocked, and I’m not much in the public eye, but I said ‘yes.’ Saint Patrick’s Day is a celebration of our heritage.”

Finnigan was born in Saranac Lake, where he owned and operated the menswear and specialty store, T.F. Finnigan’s, for 35 years. Both the name and the business predated him.

“I’m (Thomas F. Finnigan) the third,” said Finnigan. “We think my name may go back six or seven generations. My son, Tom, who lives in California, is the fourth, but could actually be fifth or sixth generation, making my grandson the fifth — or the sixth or seventh.”

The Finnigans trace their roots — and the generational naming discrepancy — back to the town of Dunmanway, Ireland, in County Cork. A market town founded in the 1700s, Dunmanway’s early growth was rooted in the cultivation of flax, weaving and the Irish linen industry. In 1827, free market economic policies in England ended protective duties on Irish linen. Three years later, Finnigan’s ancestors immigrated to Canada (or Boston, the historical record being unclear) and settled in northern New York’s St. Lawrence Valley. In 1915, Finnigan’s grandfather found his way to Saranac Lake and, in 1923, opened T.F. Finnigan’s at its enduring 79 Main St. location. “Altogether the store with its attractive front and fine interior has the air of a metropolitan establishment,” noted the Lake Placid News at the time of the business’s opening.

“I graduated from Middlebury College after high school, and later completed my graduate degree at St. Lawrence University,” said Finnigan. “When I returned to the area, my wife began teaching here in Saranac Lake, so I eventually joined the family business and ended up running the store. Working there, I got to meet people from all over the country and the world. I also worked as an adjunct professor at North Country Community College, teaching psychology in state and federal prisons. I sold the store to the Williams brothers about seven years ago.”

Finnigan was also a certified Alpine ski coach, deeply involved in ski racing at the college and national levels and is a member of the Saranac Lake High School Athletic Hall of Fame. He and his wife, Lorraine, raised two children in Saranac Lake — Tom and Kimberly — both of whom inherited his passion for alpine skiing.

The Finnigans of Tom’s ancestral family naturally held all kinds of jobs upon arriving in America.

“The story goes that one of my relatives worked for the railroad and, from time to time, trains would go off the tracks,” said Finnigan. “It was his job to write up incident reports for the railroad company, and his supervisor told him at one point that the reports he was submitting were too long and detailed. To shorten them up, this relative of mine began telegraphing reports that simply read ‘Off again, on again, gone again, Finnigan.'”

As the parade travels up Main St. on Saturday with Finnigan at its head, it will pass the downtown storefront that still bears his name — a purveyor of more than a few fine linen dress shirts over the past century, with a familial connection to the bygone flax and linen markets of Dunmanway and County Cork.

Saranac Lake’s St. Patrick’s Day parade and festivities are planned by the Saranac Lake Irish Gaelic Organization (SLIGO), a group of residents dedicated to community service and the promotion and celebration of Irish and Irish-American history. Membership is open to all, regardless of heritage or religion.