Oct. 4, 1964 - Two dozen New York city and state officials sat in a reviewing stand on Fifth Avenue today, watching a Pulaski Day parade that included young women in sequined vests, men in plumed caps, drum majorettes, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and — to their great surprise — Robert F. Kennedy.
Kennedy’s appearance with a group from Glen Cove, L.I., brough squeals and applause from onlookers, a faint smile from Mayor Robert Wagner, and angry reactions from parade officials, including the parade committee president, Francis J. Wazeter, a Republican.
“What kind of dirty trick is this?” he snapped after a band hired by the committee struck up “Hello, Bobby,” to the tune of “Hello, Dolly.”
“He was invited to review the parade, certainly not take part in it,” Wazeter said.
As Kennedy trotted across 42nd St., Wazeter told friends in the reviewing stand in front of the New York Public Library:
“If this guy was in New York a little longer, he would have known what to do. It’s a shame, a dirty shame.”
Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for Senator, said later:
“I was invited to march in the parade by my neighbors in Glen Cove. I’d rather march in the parade with Poles than stand in the reviewing stand.”
While a group of high school girls twirled batons in front of the stand, Wazeter insisted that no political candidate had marched in the parade in its 28-year history.
“He’s the first one, for purely selfish, political reasons to break this tradition,” said Wazeter, general counsel to the New York State Board of Standards and Appeals. “The fact that he is the first one can speak for itself.”
The parade president said “an advance man” for Kennedy had phoned him on Friday to ask if the Democratic Senatorial candidate could march in the parade.
“I said no and explained why,” Wazeter said. “He told me that Kennedy would adhere to this. I had no reason not to believe it.”
Kennedy’s camp said if the phone call had been made, the candidate, at least, had not been informed of Wazeter’s remarks.
When the last flats disappeared up Fifth Avenue at 5:45 p.m., the chief reviewing officer, Postmaster General John A. Grounouski, remarked that the parade “had lots of good music and lots of pretty girls and all those things that make a parade interesting.”
After learning of the dispute, he said: “I was shocked that the President of the Pulaski Memorial Committee attempted to turn the day’s nonpartisan atmosphere into a partisan political attack against Bob Kennedy.
“It is well known that Francis Wazeter has been an active worker in Republican Presidential campaigns for many years. He was not speaking for Polish-Americans when he attacked Mr. Kennedy. Instead, he was exposing his own Goldwater-Republican stripes and exploiting his nonpolitical position on the Pulaski Committee.”
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