Retired FDNY firefighter needs donor for bone-marrow transplant

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, firefighter Brian Kevan called his sister Kristin to ask a simple question.

"He said, 'Are you seeing something on TV?'" she recalled Wednesday.

This was before the second plane hit the second tower at the World Trade Center and though Kevan, attached to FDNY Engine 221 / Ladder 104 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was off-duty, he told his sister: "I've got to go, it's what I signed up for."

Before he did, the two shared a moment, Kristin Kevan said.

"We said the Fireman's Prayer together — and then we didn't hear from him again for another 72 hours."

After racing to Ground Zero as a first responder on 9/11 and then spending weeks there in the aftermath, Brian Kevan, 52, of Bethpage, now is battling 9/11-related cancer. His doctors told him he needs a bone-marrow transplant. Kristin Kevan said relatives haven't been a match. Now the family is reaching out to the public — hoping to find someone who can help them save Brian Kevan's life.

Already there's been an outpouring of support.

As part of that outreach, the Bethpage Fire Department will hold an open house Oct. 9 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., where anyone interested can be tested to see if they might be a bone marrow donor for Kevan. The family is also asking anyone interested in being a donor to contact Be the Match, the nonprofit organization that connects patients with donors — and to get tested.

"It's awesome. It’s pretty wild," Brian Kevan said of the community rallying around his cause. " … I'm at a loss for words."

The goal is to get as many people tested as possible to find the best possible match, he said. The better the match, he said, the less likely he'll suffer adverse side effects from treatment.

Potential donors can get a kit at bethematch.org. Donors should be between the ages of 18 and 40, according to the website, which cites studies showing "that patients receiving blood stem cells from younger donors have a better long-term survival rate."

For now, Brian Kevan, an Island Trees High School graduate, spends several days a week at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan and otherwise remains isolated in his home down the block from the house where he grew up in Bethpage.

Isolated, because he is immunocompromised.

"I'm on hold. Life is on hold," he said. "We’e got two things going on: You’ve got my cancer, then you’ve got COVID, and they’re kind of running parallel."

Denise Nick, Brian's girlfriend, said he has remained positive throughout the process and talks about the future. "He's strong," she said.

"He has all these plans for after when he’s healthy to fix up the house and go on vacation and just live life."

In the meantime, his family is hoping for the best.

"He does not like the word hero, to have people think of him as a hero," Kristin Kevan said, "because he said he was just doing his job. But that's just what he is, he's a hero, because that's what all the people who went down there are. They're heroes … Right now he needs this and we just want him to get better."

With Cecilia Dowd

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”