The Greater Lakes Region Children’s Auction is a nonprofit in Laconia, New Hampshire, that raises money each year for children and families in need. My brothers run an annual event called Pub Mania that helps to bolster the auction’s fundraising efforts. This year, I got to write about two Pub Mania volunteers—who are also friends of mine. The blog was used on the Children’s Auction website and in its newsletter; I also sent it to local media in the Laconia area.

Jennifer Bailey grew up in the Lakes Region and has a long memory of the good cheer that the Greater Lakes Region Children’s Auction brings to the holiday season. When her children were young several decades ago, the family donated toys. Jennifer also purchased holiday gifts while listening to the radio broadcasts.

Shawn Bailey came to the region as an adult and began to take part as an Auction volunteer 14 years ago. He took bids on the phone banks, with his coworkers from Coldwell Banker, and also helped organize annual toy drives in the office.

“It was addictive to see the magic that goes on there, and how many people help,” Shawn recalls. “I was impressed with the community and how generous people are.”

Jennifer says she tends toward the shy side; getting involved with the Auction in person didn’t feel like her thing. Until her longtime friends, Jennifer and Allan Beetle, co-owners of Patrick’s Pub & Eatery, started dreaming up Pub Mania 11 years ago. 

“Allan proposed the idea, and Shawn and I loved it so much, we said, ‘We’re in. Tell us what we can do,’” Jennifer says. “That first year, it was meeting and talking—throwing ideas around. They did the majority of it. We just kept saying, ‘What can we do? What can we do?’”

Since that first year, Pub Mania has grown tremendously, becoming an event that provides the lion’s share of the funds raised during each year’s Auction week. The event is a 24-hour barstool challenge involving 31 teams of 24 people each.   For each of the 24 hours, teams participate in fun games and activities; fundraising also happens year-round, as do various events that range from yard sales and dinner gatherings to the Pub Mania Shuffle, a two-mile walk held on Wednesday nights in the spring and fall.

“I was thrilled when Allan came up with the idea for Pub Mania,” Jennifer says. “It’s made it easy for me to get involved.” 

Jennifer has been a Pub Mania referee since the event’s start. Shawn first served as team captain with his Coldwell Banker colleagues and came on board as a referee three years ago. The refs stay up for 24 hours, working with the crowd, answering questions, leading games and raffles, and handing out prizes. Shawn also judges the dance contest and helps the event’s many musicians set up and break down.

Allan and Jennifer; Jeff and Wendy Beetle—also Patrick’s co-owners— and Kate Flaherty are the other event referees.

Pub Mania raised $47,000 for the Children’s Auction in its first year—crushing Allan’s goal of $30,000. Last year, the amount raised was $353,361, more than half of the total $580,584 that was raised for the Children’s Auction.

“I feel really good about it and really proud,” says Shawn. “The amount of money—it’s needed in this community. To be able to be a part of raising so much money is very rewarding.” He adds that there is pressure to keep pace! “We just have to keep doing it somehow.”

Jennifer says, “I love the emotional part of it. Closing ceremonies gives me such a good feeling. I cannot believe the amount of money raised. We live in a beautiful area, but we have a lot of need. It’s amazing how much the Children’s Auction does and how the community comes together.”

In 10 years, Pub Mania has raised nearly $2 million for the Children’s Auction. The 2019 edition of the world’s greatest barstool challenge is just around the corner, kicking off on Dec. 5 for 24 hours. 

Look for the Beetles and Baileys there. Shawn and Allan are sure to perform “Pub Maniacs Answer the Call,” a traditional song the Beetles wrote to tell the event’s backstory.

Says Jennifer, “I can’t imagine the holiday season without Pub Mania and the Auction. 

“When we get to opening ceremonies, there’s always this feeling of, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe we’re here again,’” she adds. “You get to see familiar faces from years past. And when closing ceremonies come, a recipient speaks about what the money has meant to them. It puts all our efforts into perspective.”

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The founder of the Children’s Auction reflects on the event’s growth, popularity

LACONIA—Back in 1976, when Warren Bailey was starting his career as a morning DJ at WLNH, his mentor taught him something that has since changed the lives of thousands in the Lakes Region. “He told me, “The microphone is a powerful tool. Do something meaningful with it,’” Warren recalled. 

It wasn’t a message Bailey knew how to act on back then. He was 24. He had yet to glimpse need firsthand. But six years later, he knocked on the door of an apartment building in Laconia to let the resident inside know he’d won a prize for displaying a WLNH bumper sticker on his car. 

There was no furniture inside. A baby was lying on the bare wooden floor, wrapped in a blanket. Bailey was confused at first, thinking perhaps this man at the door was just moving in. Bailey then realized he was looking at poverty in the eye for the first time. 

Bailey heard the echo of his mentor’s mantra and well understood what he needed to do. He gave birth to the Greater Lakes Region Children’s Auction that year, using the power of his microphone to raise money for children and families in need. 

Broadcasting on WLNH from an unheated van parked on North Main Street, Bailey raised $2,100, auctioning off two truckloads of items donated by people in the region. By ones, twos, and threes, over time, area residents got behind Bailey’s passion, adding their own and creating an event that helps to sustain 62 area nonprofits that provide for children and families in need.

The Auction now involves thousands, many of whom give up a week’s vacation for the privilege of taking part in dozens of ways. The items that are auctioned off are so plentiful the event venue is vast. A nonprofit board now governs the Children’s Auction. The total raised continues to climb each year. In 2018, the Auction raised $580,584.

“It’s overwhelming,” said Bailey, a gentle and tender man who gets weepy as he tells the Auction’s stories, which have played out over nearly four decades. They are the stories of the people who have helped the effort grow, the people who have been served and now give back. “It takes your breath away,” he added. “The volunteers are there every year.”

Bailey came to the Lakes Region and joined WLNH in 1976 after working in radio in Massachusetts and New Hampshire for several years. “I fell in love with the area and the station. The local owner and our wonderful staff was there for me right from the beginning,” he said. 

After leaving WLNH in 2001, Bailey co-owned a radio station and later moved to television and digital sales. In 2015, he launched his own media-buying business, WB Media 1—the “1” added so the firm wouldn’t be confused with Warner Bros.

As he does each year, Bailey will make his traditional appearance at the Auction, though, during the 38^th annual event, to be held from Dec. 3 to Dec. 7 at the Belknap Mall. Returning gives Bailey the pleasure of hearing stories from children who were helped long ago and now give back in gratitude—like the young girl who walked away from the auction site 25 years ago, accompanied by a crying mother; the mom was deemed unworthy of assistance due to an addiction and sent away by a volunteer—long since excused from service. Bailey chased the two out; he gave the mother $20, saying, “Promise me you will do something for your daughter with this.”

Not long ago, that girl—now a grown woman who is a paralegal in Boston—drove to the Auction. She asked for Bailey personally, thanked him for the help he offered her late mother, and handed him a check for $1,000. “That’s the kind of impact that the Auction has had,” Bailey said. “And that’s just one powerful story.”

In the beginning, Bailey spread the word by asking everyone he met to listen to his story of the Auction and its magic for 10 minutes. In this way, he built steady and unexpected support and growth.

In 1998, Terry Hicks came to town as the new general manager for Metrocast and offered to televise the event, which had previously been broadcast only on the radio. Around the same time, businessman David McGreevy spearheaded the building of an elaborate set from which the Auction took place. 

Alan McRae, who worked for the telephone company NYNEX, made it possible for the Auction to have four phones, instead of one. (Now there is an entire phone bank of volunteers.) And RJ and Bridget Harding, owners of the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion, offered their entire staff and a host of equipment for the full week of the event, starting a tradition that continues still. The Auction that begin with Bailey tabulating the proceeds with a pad of paper and a pencil became tech-savvy with the Harding’s IT assist.

Most recently, Patrick’s Pub & Eatery created Pub Mania, a 24-hour event that raises the lion’s share of each year’s profit, bringing in $353,361 last year and donating nearly $2 million over 10 years.

“The generosity of the community blows my mind,” Bailey said. “People would so often come to the broadcast and hand me $10, knowing it’s the last $10 they have, but also believing that someone else needs it more. There’s no shortage of Christmas spirit at the Children’s Auction.”

The Children’s Auction runs from Dec. 3-7 at the Belknap Mall. Bring an item to donate, or come watch the fun and bid!

Visit www.ChildrensAuction.com to learn more.

If you know a Children’s Auction Champion, send suggestions to Jennifer Kelley at Jenn@ChildrensAuction.com.

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