LANESBOROUGH — A grateful cancer survivor is giving back to a supportive community this weekend with a daylong fundraiser in the heart of Lanesborough.
Joe Prince, owner of Berkshire Mantiques and the Greylock Grounds coffee wholesale business, is hosting Cars & Coffee for Cancer Awareness from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday.
The outdoor event at Berkshire Mantiques, located in the former Vacation Village complex on Route 7, will feature a classic car show of 40 hot rods, according to Prince, and four bands performing live starting at 2 p.m.
The event is free, but donations will be accepted to help doctors and patients in their fight against cancer.
“We’re doing it all on goodwill,” Prince said. “We don’t want people to feel they have to pay to have a good time.”
He noted that the money raised will be turned over to Dr. Joseph Yared, a Pittsfield urologist who will forward the donation to the cancer-fighting/awareness organization of his choice.
On Monday, Prince celebrates his third anniversary of a successful surgery by Yared to remove a kidney ravaged by an aggressive tumor that, he says, could have killed him.
The Cheshire resident had high praise for Yared and the staff at Urology Services of the Berkshires.
“Right down to the nurses and secretaries, they helped me with my anxiety,” he said. “I consider them my friends.”
Prince started Mantiques 22 years ago; it was incorporated two years ago to become Berkshire Mantiques.
Within the past year, he moved to the Vacation Village site, renting 7,000 square feet of space to display and sell “antiques and collectibles for the man cave and she-sheds,” he said.