Pints Pour as Shears Shave at O'Neill's

O’Neill’s Irish Pub was the perfect place to grab a pint and a haircut Saturday in Norwalk. That is presuming, of course, you were at a St. Baldrick’s Foundation fundraiser and you didn’t mind bald as your only style option.

Outside the pub, a tent housed a crowd of onlookers as participants had their locks shorn to raise money for the foundation to fight childhood cancer. Ollie O’Neill, the pub’s owner, said he is happy offer his support because cancer is something that touches so many people. This was the fourth consecutive year the pub has participated.

“I personally have been affected by it,” he said in the tent before the shavings commenced. “My sister died of a childhood cancer when she was 9. I was 8. She had leukemia.”

This year’s goal was $70,000, and at the start of clipping they had raised $19,614. The O'Neill's listing on the St. Baldrick’s website is still taking donations, and O’Neill said corporate sponsors were making matching contributions that had yet to be tallied. As the clippers were warmed up, 39 people were ready to go bald. By the end of the event, the website listed 54 as walking out of O'Neill's with a little more than a trim.

As of Saturday, Al Ziedins, Danny Costello and Brenden Nelson rounded out the list of top individual fundraisers. Each walked away from the tent sporting a shaven scalp. The Norwalk Fire Department and Team Phelps were the top participating teams.

O’Neill opened the event by bestowing on Maggie Connelly the “Knight of the Bald Table” honor for her help in keeping the event going for the past four years at the pub.

The shears were manned by SoNo Academy students Mary Recinos, Lindsay Jones, Anna Breglia and Dana Smith. They were joined by Victor Laconfora from Mane Street Salon.

Would you lose your locks for a good cause?

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