Atlantic Health Morristown Medical Center President Trish O’Keefe has been selected as Grand Marshal of the 2027 St. Patrick’s Day Parade of Morris County, an honor that brings together her decades of hospital leadership with a lifelong connection to her own Irish heritage. A third generation Irish American, O’Keefe is the daughter of Hank and Ruth O’Keefe, whose maiden name was Hennessey, with her family’s roots tracing back to County Cork on both her mother’s and father’s sides.
O’Keefe described the selection as a genuinely meaningful honor, one tied directly to a parade that celebrates Irish heritage with deep roots throughout Morris County and the surrounding region, and especially in Morristown itself, the town where she has lived and worked for many years. As grand marshal, she will lead more than 3,000 marchers down South Street in Morristown on Saturday, March 13, a parade that routinely draws between 50,000 and 70,000 spectators lining the route each year.
The Morristown parade holds genuine historical significance well beyond its size, standing as one of the largest St. Patrick’s Day parades in New Jersey and one of the oldest parades anywhere in the country. Its origins trace directly back to the brutal winter of 1779 and 1780, when General George Washington’s Continental Army endured one of the harshest encampments of the entire Revolutionary War at Jockey Hollow near Morristown. In recognition of the support his Irish militiamen provided during that difficult winter, Washington granted them the day off on March 17, an act that led directly to the very first St. Patrick’s Day parade in Morris County back in 1780, making the tradition O’Keefe now leads a genuinely direct link to the Revolutionary War era itself.
O’Keefe’s connection to the parade runs far deeper than this single honor. A member of the Irish American Association of Northwest Jersey, she has been actively involved with the parade for more than 25 years, having served in multiple roles including as a parade patron long before being named grand marshal. Her broader recognition within the Irish American community extends well beyond Morris County as well, having been named in 2022 by Irish America magazine as one of the Irish Healthcare and Lifesciences 50, a national honor recognizing Irish American leaders across the healthcare and life sciences fields. O’Keefe has spoken proudly about the values she associates with her Irish heritage, describing a deep connection to qualities like strength, perseverance, love of family, loyalty, spirituality, and a genuine ability to enjoy life.
O’Keefe’s professional career reflects a genuinely remarkable four and a half decade journey within healthcare, one that began 45 years ago when she started out as a bedside nurse. She has spent the years since dedicating herself to leadership at Atlantic Health Morristown, eventually being named president of the hospital and senior vice president of Atlantic Health in 2016. Earlier in her career, she also served for several years as Atlantic Health’s chief nurse executive, giving her direct clinical leadership experience that has clearly shaped her broader approach to hospital administration.
That leadership has earned O’Keefe substantial industry recognition over the years. She has been named to ROI-NJ’s Influencers Power list four separate times, alongside a spot on ROI-NJ’s Influencers: Women in Business, Health Care list. Over the past two years specifically, she has also earned recognition on the NJBIZ Health Care Power list, and Becker’s Hospital Review has named her one of its CNOs to Know every year from 2023 through 2026, a genuinely sustained run of national recognition within the healthcare leadership community.
For the parade committee, O’Keefe’s combination of decades long healthcare leadership and deep, sustained personal involvement in the parade itself made her a genuinely fitting choice for this year’s honor. Carl Stopper, president of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade of Morris County Inc., praised O’Keefe’s extraordinary leadership and unwavering commitment to compassionate healthcare, along with her decades of dedicated service to the people of Morristown, describing those qualities as embodying the very spirit the parade itself is built around, community service paired with genuine pride in Irish heritage. Stopper called the recognition both well deserved and deeply meaningful, and expressed genuine anticipation for celebrating O’Keefe’s accomplishments as she prepares to lead the parade down South Street this coming March.
With her selection now official, O’Keefe steps into a role that connects her own decades of hospital leadership directly to one of New Jersey’s oldest and most historically significant community traditions, one that traces its origins all the way back to General Washington’s own Continental Army and continues, nearly two and a half centuries later, to bring tens of thousands of spectators to Morristown each March to celebrate Irish heritage together.
