All residents are invited to the Village of Brockport's "party with a heart." The third annual Max's Mardi Gras Parade and Festival Saturday, April 28, will be a very special occasion for some 40 children with life-threatening illnesses or severe disabilities. But everyone else can enjoy it, too.

The parade begins at 10 a.m. at the corner of Main and Market Streets with some 60 units. High school marching bands, other musical groups, fire engines, floats of all sorts, antique and classic cars, go-carts, color guards, cheerleaders, tractors, clowns, jugglers, everything to make a parade exciting - especially for kids - will be there.

The festival starts immediately after the parade at Special Olympics Park on the SUNY Brockport campus and is sponsored jointly by the Village of Brockport and the Brockport Student Government. The parade will go, rain or shine. The festival rain site is the Tuttle North Athletic Complex on campus. The festival includes games, live music, refreshments, entertainment, demonstrations, displays, wagon rides, face painting, art and craft activities, zoomobile, puppet show, cake walk, and more. Helicopters will be present, weather and emergencies permitting.

The 40 "special guests" will be clients of the four co-sponsoring organizations: Camp Good Days and Special Times, Lifetime Assistance Foundation, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and the United Cerebral Palsy Association. They will ride on floats or sit on the reviewing stand for the parade and enjoy festival activities arranged especially for them.

Guests will also benefit through fund-raising for the organizations that care for them. No one will need to pay to enjoy most festival activities, but donations will go to the co-sponsors. The event's organizing committee urges Rochesterians to make this belated Mardi Gras a very special time for those very special kids by sharing it with them.

Parade and festival organizers are looking for more volunteers. Especially needed are men and women willing to help direct parade participants to the staging area and to ensure that traffic is rerouted to avoid the parade route. Other volunteers will help to run children's games, distribute flyers along the parade route, work at the hotdog stand, and assist with other activities at the festival. An orientation session for volunteers will be held Friday, April 27 at 5 p.m. at Special Olympics Park on the SUNY Brockport campus (just west of Cooper Hall). For more information or to offer to help, call Dody Ballard at 964-5809 or 395-2661 or Bill Andrews at 637-3721.