Thursday, October 1, 2026
When Desmond Ryan walked into the Irish Pub in Baldwin, the room erupted.
More than 200 friends, customers, fellow bartenders and bar owners had packed the longtime Baldwin establishment to support Ryan, 35, who was recently diagnosed with Stage I NK/T-cell lymphoma. As he made his way inside on July 26, the crowd began applauding.
“I was in complete shock. I was in awe,” Ryan said. “As soon as I walked in, everybody started clapping, and it was like a roar of applause.”
For Ryan, who is undergoing chemotherapy and preparing for radiation treatment, simply being in a crowded bar was something doctors had cautioned against because the treatment had weakened his immune system. But with his mother and sister visiting from Belfast, Northern Ireland, and hundreds gathering on his behalf, he wanted to be there.
The From Belfast to Baldwin fundraiser collected about $8,600 in four hours, according to Irish Pub owner Shawn Sabel, through door donations, a 50/50 raffle and more than 30 donated raffle baskets. A GoFundMe created for Ryan has also raised roughly $40,000.
The turnout reflected relationships Ryan has built since arriving on Long Island from Belfast about 12 years ago.
Ryan originally saw New York as one stop on a longer journey. He hoped to travel to other places including Australia and Thailand, but quickly changed his plans. “Everybody was so nice, hospitable, which is crazy to say,” he said. “Everybody thinks New Yorkers are New Yorkers. But I just felt like I belonged here.”
He initially stayed in a Rockville Centre hotel while working as a barback, or bartender’s assistant, often returning to his room around 5 a.m., paying for another night and repeating the routine the next day. After about two weeks, a friend from Dublin offered Ryan and another friend a place to stay in Lynbrook.
Ryan soon found a close-knit Irish community and formed friendships at the bars where he worked. Though trained as a ceramic tiler in Belfast and later working in construction and HVAC, he repeatedly returned to bartending.
“Bartending was kind of like my calling,” he said. “You meet all kinds of walks of life. You get to know people, and it's a very social thing.”
Eventually that path brought him to The Irish Pub, where he has worked for about three years and developed a close friendship with Sabel. “He's become family to me,” Sabel said. “He's like my brother.”
Sabel described Ryan as funny, outgoing and quick to help others. “Des is — honestly, he's the kindest soul that you would ever meet,” Sabel said. “He would do anything for anyone.”
Nearly a year before the fundraiser, Ryan began experiencing what appeared to be an ear infection, followed by persistent sinus problems. Multiple courses of antibiotics failed to improve his condition, and he repeatedly returned to doctors and hospitals.
About six weeks before the benefit, Ryan developed a near-104-degrees fever while working behind the bar. A woman who worked across the street saw how ill he was and contacted Sabel, insisting that Ryan go to the hospital.
He was admitted that night and transferred the following day to The Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, where he remained for about three weeks while doctors conducted tests.
During his second week there, an oncologist told him he had cancer.
“I still don't know if it's really sunken in to reality,” Ryan said. “It's a big, scary word — the word cancer. My heart was broken. I didn't really know what to do at the time.”
Doctors diagnosed NK/T-cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Subsequent testing, including a bone marrow biopsy, showed the cancer was localized and classified as Stage I.
Ryan is being treated in 21-day chemotherapy cycles and is expected to undergo 28 days of radiation before completing additional chemotherapy. The treatments, he said, have caused fatigue and neuropathy and taken a toll physically and mentally.
His girlfriend, Breanne Handwerker, has helped care for him, while his mother and sister traveled from Ireland to be with him. It was his sister's first visit to the United States since he moved here, and he had hoped to show her around New York City, but his treatment left him with little energy.
“I really wanted to show her around the city, maybe take her on a tour,” he said. “But I couldn't do it. I could barely even go for a night for dinner.”
Even while hospitalized, Ryan found himself looking after another patient. One of his roommates was an older man from Woodside, Queens, who Ryan said was seriously ill with cancer. Before Ryan was transferred to another room, he left the man a pair of headphones so he could watch television. Ryan said the small gesture later moved the man to tears.
“It's nice to be nice, in my eyes,” Ryan said.
As Ryan began treatment, his friends started looking for ways to help him financially.
His longtime friend Aodan, whom Ryan has known since high school in Belfast, created a GoFundMe page. Sabel and Rick Dankenbrink, owner of Gino's, in Rockville Centre, and another close friend of Ryan's, then organized the Irish Pub benefit.
They put the event together in roughly two weeks, a process Sabel said would ordinarily take two or three months. Dankenbrink helped secure raffle donations, with more than 30 baskets contributed. About $3,500 came from basket raffles alone.
The Irish Pub has hosted large charitable events before, including Toys for Tots fundraisers, but Sabel said that Ryan's benefit surpassed them. “This was definitely our biggest fundraiser,” he said.
One of the most emotional moments, Sabel said, came when Ryan arrived. “He was very tired that day, but he rallied as he always does and put on a smile for everybody,” Sabel recounted.
Ryan had even hoped to tend bar during the event, but physically could not. Instead he slowly made his way through the room, greeting people he had met over the years of bartending across Long Island.
“It was surreal,” he said. “It was very, very uplifting, and it was definitely something that just makes you realize that people care.”
Calls and text messages have continued since the fundraiser, he said, often from people asking whether he needs anything. Accepting help has not always been easy for him, but his illness has changed his perspective.
“No matter how low you are or how high you are, everybody needs somebody at the end of the day,” he said. “You can't just walk through this world alone, because you don't know what's around the corner.”
The months ahead will include more chemotherapy and radiation, but Ryan said that knowing how many people are behind him has given him another reason to keep going. “It definitely gave me something to fight for, knowing that everyone was there,” he said. “Everyone was there to fight for me.”
“I'm just happy to be on this earth right now,” he added. “It's going to be a tough couple of months. But just knowing that I have those people to lean on — it means a lot.”
