If the Ironton Rotary Club members are wishing for bad weather this weekend, they may be forgiven by the community.

Saturday is the club’s annual pancake breakfast, and some of the members find that the worse the weather is, the more people turn out for the event.

“The worse the weather is, the better we do,” said Ray “Doc” Payne, Rotary Club Sergeant-at-Arms and pancake chef for more than 30 years. “If the weather is nice, people stay home and wash their cars.”

Payne celebrates his 80th birthday Feb. 12, the day before the event.

The breakfast is the club’s major fundraiser of the year.

Though the work requires Payne and others to get up at 5 a.m. to mix pancake batter and set-up chairs, he said it is all for a good cause.

“Well it’s a civic organization,” Payne said. “You get proud of yourself for some of the things that the club does.”

The club, along with other Rotary Clubs in the area, are supporting the construction of a children’s portion of a library in Belize.

Locally, the club provides scholarships to nursing students, dictionaries to each third grader in Lawrence County and is working on revitalization of the fountain area of downtown Ironton.

Don Edwards, a past president of the club, has been a pancake chef since 1976. Edwards formulated the recipe for making the pancakes. The recipe was written on the cabinet in the kitchen of the AEP building, were the breakfast is held.

Edwards said his favorite part is making all of the different colors and flavors of pancakes.

“They never know what’s coming out of the kitchen,” he said.

Darwin Haynes has been a pancake-flipper for about 10 years now.

“Well it’s our main fundraiser each year and it helps support our programs,” Haynes said of the breakfast. “That’s probably the main reason. We get to see a lot of people that we don’t normally get to see but once a year and it’s a lot of fun.”

The pancake breakfast will be 7 a.m. to noon Feb. 13 at the AEP building on Third Street in Ironton.

The meal includes pancakes, sausage and coffee.

Tickets can be purchased for $5 from any Rotary Club member or at the door.

The Lawrence County Health Department will be on hand to provide flu shots.