When the ornate antique clock strikes midnight on Saturday at Harlow’s Pub in Peterborough, it’ll promptly be raffled off. The ceremony will conclude a monthlong fundraiser for Harlow’s employee Ian Bishop, who was diagnosed with Acute Myleoid Lymphoma in September.
“This is a nasty and very debilitating illness in the short term and has significant potential to be a life-altering event,” Ian’s father, Russ Bishop, wrote in the gofundme page he started for Ian in September.
Bishop is 35 and lives in Peterborough, and had worked at Harlow’s for six years. He served two tours in Iraq, and family members speculate that his diagnosis may be the result of his exposure to burn pits he tended during his deployment.
As of Wednesday, the raffle had taken in more than $2,500.
“Every day we sell at least one ticket,” organizer and Harlow’s employee Jess McCullough said.
The generosity started the day she hung the clock, she said, with out-of-towners curious about what she was doing. Since then, McCullough said that fellow veterans have given their support, people who are exclusively interested in supporting Bishop, as well as people who are exclusively interested in the clock. Several regulars have contributed multiple times throughout the month, she said.
Why a clock? The raffle fundraiser was initiated by a Harlow’s patron, McCullough said, who donated the clock as a prize and asked McCullough to organize the raffle. The clock was made in Bristol, Connecticut in 1886 by the E. Ingraham and Company. The donor prefers to remain anonymous, McCullough said, but that they had the clock, didn’t need it and didn’t want to deal with selling it, and thought it would make a good prize.
Bishop has not been able to work since he was diagnosed, McCullough said, and he’s been receiving chemotherapy in advance of a bone marrow transplant scheduled for mid-March.
Bishop will need around the clock care for about eight months afterward, she said, and his girlfriend, Lydia Burleigh, who also works at Harlow’s, plans to be out of work a month taking care of him.
Raffle tickets will be on sale for $5 through midnight on Saturday, and additional contributions can be made at the following gofundme page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ian-bishop-could-use-our-help.