Rockville Centre St. Pat's parade set for Saturday

As it has for the last 13 years, the annual Rockville Centre St. Patrick’s Parade will step off this Saturday, March 20 at noon from the corner of N. Long Beach Road and Maple Avenue. Over 110 different organizations will march this year, proceeding down Maple Avenue past Village Hall and ending at N. Village Avenue.

Said to be one of the best-attended and most enthusiastically supported parades outside of New York City, in the course of 13 years, it has distributed over $550,000 to 39 separate charities — one local, one national and one Irish — earning its motto,“The Parade that Cares and Shares.”

“The parade celebrates service to our country, our church and our community, as well as both our Irish heritage and our pride in being American,” said parade committee Co-Chairman Sean O’Rourke.

“The parade is the culmination of a year of hard work by a parade committee consisting of approximately 70 people,” said parade committee Co-Chairman Ann Marie Myatt, “and your attendance at the parade honors that hard work.”

The parade committee has chosen long-time Rockville Centre resident Bernie O’Brien to be the grand marshal of the parade. O’Brien is a retired teacher and an award-winning athletic administrator who helped run the International Games for the Disabled at Mitchell Field in 1984. The Grand Marshal’s Reception will take place at 7 p.m. Friday night at the Rockville Links Country Club.

The local charity chosen by the parade committee this year is the Greater New York Chapter of the Families of Spinal Muscular Atrophy, which is based in Rockville Centre. Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) is a motor neuron disease that affects the voluntary muscles that are used for activities such as crawling, walking, head and neck control, and swallowing. A small group of parents started Families of SMA in 1984 to raise funds for SMA research to cure the disease and to support all affected families. Back then, very little was known about the disease, there was no family support services and thus very little hope. Today, Families of SMA have 26 chapters nationwide with over 65,000 members and supporters, and have raised and funded over $50 million for SMA research