With less than four weeks left, the organizers of the St. Patrick's Day Parade are getting ready for another fun tribute to everybody's favorite Irish saint.

The 12th annual edition of the parade is scheduled to kick off at noon March 21 near East Main and Front streets. The parade will be held rain or shine.The main sponsor of the parade is the Ancient Order of Hibernians John "Jack" Kehoe Division No. 1, which is based in Girardville. The parade chairman since the event began is Joseph Wayne, Girardville, who learned this week that the parade will have a very special guest."Pennsylvania Lieutenant Gov. Mike Stack will come to Girardville on March 21," Wayne, who has been in contact with Stack and his office to invite him to the borough, said.Stack was elected in November as the state's 33rd lieutenant governor.Details are being worked on for the visit, but Wayne pointed out that Stack is a descendant of Irish immigrants who settled in Girardville and worked in the anthracite coal fields."You're the first to hear about it," Wayne told The Republican-Herald, explaining that the lieutenant governor's office will officially announce the visit in a media release.The 2015 Girardville St. Patrick's Day Committee has been meeting every Thursday for the past few weeks to get everything in order. The committee has members from the local AOH and Girardville Ladies AOH Daughters of Erin Division No. 18, and is working with Mayor Edward Burns and Girardville borough council in planning and conducting the large parade in a borough with less than 2,000 residents.Each year, there is a theme to honor various individuals and groups, with this year focusing on sports."We'll be honoring the high school championship teams who won their division and excel in their sport," Wayne said.Wayne said the work to prepare the commemorative book, which will include histories and photos of the winning teams and coaches, is behind schedule by at least a week, but the book will be done in time for the parade, as will the commemorative T-shirts."We're going to concentrate on Shenandoah Valley, Mahanoy Area and North Schuylkill," he said. "We're also going to include stories on Babe Conroy, Jerry Wolman, Mike Rhoades and Carson Long. We wanted to have one person from each school but wanted to do something with Babe, who just passed."Wayne, who is considered the "Founding Father" of the parade, said it was not expected that the parade would get so big."We were sitting around the bar one night talking about having our own parade, and everyone said let's do it," Wayne said. "A lot of people immediately pitched in, including (John) "Mouche" McNelis, who had a lot of experience with parade. I also had some experience. We put our heads together on it, but we never, never fathomed that it would take off the way it did. I think that one thing that did help us was that for the first parade we decide to celebrate our ethnic and religious diversity. We had the various ministers and the priest riding together in the parade as the grand marshals. You don't see that too often in a St. Patrick's Day parade."Wayne added that money raised through the parade beyond paying expenses goes to worthy causes."Any money that we raise goes to charitable organizations, particularly those for kids in the area," he said. "We gave about $10,000 two years in a row. Kids with cancer or people who had problems with their children that went to Wills Eye Hospital, we helped them with expenses. We've done a lot of good charity work."Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC