GREENVILLE AREA

World record-holding skydiver Michael J. Zang will be the featured jumper at the 11th annual Stefan Banic Skydiving Festival and 3rd Pennsylvania State Parachuting Championships this weekend at Greenville Municipal Airport.

The three-day event begins Friday.

Zang, a 32-year-old Texas native, set a world record and raised money for the Special Olympics last year by making 500 jumps in one 24-hour period, according to Kevin Fenstermacher, Thiel College sports information director.

Zang has made more than 3,700 jumps since making his first one on a dare about 12 years ago.

In addition to skydiving opportunities and competition, the three-day event will offer those on hand an opportunity to take passenger rides in helicopters and small airplanes.

It also will feature an array of aircraft and military displays and demonstrations. Among them, Pennsylvania National Guard's Company G will have two Chinnook helicopters on hand to perform military parachuting at 11 a.m. and between 2 and 3 p.m. on Saturday.

The Borough of Greenville, Skydive Pennsylvania and the Stefan Banic Parachute Foundation are hosting the festival and competition.

Slavo Mulik, an accomplished pilot and an avid skydiver with over 2,300 jumps, founded the foundation about five years ago and is its chairman.

Mulik has organized five competitions in honor of Stefan Banic, including the 1991 and 1994 World Parachute Championships. The Guiness Book of World Records recognized the 1994 competition as the largest "World Record in Formation" with 216 skydivers.

Stefan Banic was born in 1870 in Nestich, Slovakia -- which is now part of the town of Slomenice, Greenville's sister city. Banic left Slovakia for America and settled in Greenville, where he worked as a coal miner. Banic developed the parachute while living in Greenville; he was granted the first patent on the parachute in 1914.

Banic donated his patent rights to the U.S. Government in exchange for honorary membership in the Army Air Corps, forerunner of the U.S. Air Force.