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N.Y. TRADITION / HERO’S WELCOME : Paper to Rain on Parade--This Time for Mandela

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A paper blizzard will fall from the high-rise buildings that line lower Broadway today when Nelson Mandela receives the greeting that New York City reserves for its special heroes.

Such greetings can be traced to the welcome for the Marquis de Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolution, when he returned for a visit to the former colonies in 1824. One hitch: There were no high-rise canyons or ticker tape, so Lafayette had to settle for cheering crowds.

The first paper shower, said to be spontaneous and still lacking ticker tape, was bestowed on President Theodore Roosevelt in 1910.

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In 1919, ticker tape became a part of the tradition, pouring down on the Prince of Wales. The idea was credited to New York’s official greeter, Grover Whalen, who wanted to stir up enthusiasm for the visitor. At the time, New York’s Irish population wasn’t feeling very hospitable toward British royalty because British troops were occupying Ireland.

“I simply started a word-of-mouth campaign and the (ticker-tape) idea filtered through the thousands of offices that line the canyon,” Whalen said. “The workers also tore up phone books, waste paper, any kind of tinsel, and made the confetti snowstorm.”

Since then, thousands of tons of torn paper have drifted down on hundreds of noteworthy people, celebrating the end of World War II and heroic feats on land, sea and in the air and beyond. Recipients of the tribute ranged from the “Lone Eagle,” Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, in 1927 to war heroes to astronauts to baseball and Olympic champions and, in 1985, to Vietnam War veterans. Among numerous notables who have received the confetti greeting were Gens. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Charles de Gaulle in 1945, Winston Churchill in 1946, Queen Elizabeth in 1957, astronaut John Glenn in 1962, the “Miracle Mets” World Series champs in 1969, Pope John Paul II in 1979 and U.S. hostages freed from Iran in 1981.

City sanitation officials say the most paper ever tossed onto a motorcade floated down on Glenn--a total of 3,474 tons.

That record seems virtually impossible to match because many new office buildings have sealed windows. And ticker tape is vanishing, too. The blizzard that greets Nelson Mandela will more likely be made of shredded computer printouts and torn up telephone books.

Source: Times Wire Services

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