After the Eagles cut Uar Bernard, a Delco bar threw a surprise party to help lift his spirits

Most surprise parties are reserved for birthdays, retirement, and other special occasions. Most people don’t throw surprise parties for football players who fail to make their team’s 53-man roster.

But that’s not the case for Dolan’s Bar in Ridley Park.

The bar organized a surprise party for Uar Bernard on Thursday night to show support from Eagles fans to the seventh-round draft pick, who is now a member of the Eagles’ practice squad.

» READ MORE: Meet Uar Bernard, the athletic marvel and Eagles draft pick who has never played football

Bernard’s connection to the community surrounding Dolan’s Bar goes back as far as his connection with the Eagles: the last day of the NFL draft on April 25.

“Hungry Dawgs,” a tailgate group that PJ Dolan, the owner of Dolan’s Bar, is involved with has an Eagles Autism Foundation section. Last year, Hungry Dawgs finished second in Eagles Autism fundraising for the year, finishing only behind Jason Kelce’s Team 62. As a result, Jamie Aldridge, who runs this section of Hungry Dawgs, and her two sons were invited to the draft in Pittsburgh.

It was there they first met Bernard, and Aldridge’s 6-year-old son, Damian, became amazed by Bernard and his home country of Nigeria. He began watching videos about the country on YouTube and the two met again during training camp.

On Sunday, when the 53-man roster was announced, few took the news of Bernard’s cut harder than Damian. Bernard’s publicist, Adrian Fox, reached out to Aldridge and Damian to come out to the Jefferson Health Training Complex to lift Bernard’s spirits.

It was then that Dolan had the idea of a pep rally at the bar to show Bernard what he’s come to mean to the city.

“This bar’s been in business for 73 years, and I have rarely seen so much hype over somebody who’s never played a sport before, let alone just any player,” Dolan said. “The physical anomaly that he is, how grateful and humble the young man is, all of it.”

Usually, Dolan would use social media to promote big events like this. But Fox told him Bernard is always on social media. Instead, the party had to be promoted the old-fashioned way: word of mouth.

With connections to the city’s prominent sports social media figures and a “finger on that pulse,” Dolan said he was able to get word out. The only social media post he shared was a vague video of him telling followers to “trust” him that they’d want to be at the bar on Thursday night, reminding them to bring their “Birds gear.”

“I’d say 90% [of the crowd] knew what was going on that night,” Dolan said. “But we just went over [to those who didn’t], like ‘Hey, this is the deal. This is his story, if you don’t know it. Let’s give this guy a round of applause and give him a pat on the back, and know that like we have his back and we think he’s going to go far in the league.’”

By the time Bernard arrived outside the bar, the inside was “absolutely mobbed,” there were no parking spots, and the temperature inside the building had risen several degrees.

Outside, Dolan, Aldridge, and her sons greeted Bernard, offering words of encouragement before the doors opened to a crowd decked out in Eagles gear, shirts Dolan had made up that said “Uar still flying,” and Nigerian flags.

Dolan said the 6-foot-4, 306-pound defensive tackle, who has already beaten the odds to come from the NFL’s International Player Pathway program, grew misty-eyed at the showing.

“He DM[ed] me later that night and thanked me for it, expressing how grateful he is to be in this city, in this town, and to play for a team like this,” Dolan said. “It just goes to show you like the the quality of gentlemen that this team drafts, and the organization that that team, the product that they put out is just superb.”

The support shown to Bernard is at the core of who the Philly sports fans who come through Dolan’s bar are. And for Dolan, a third-generation owner of his family’s business, it’s part of a gratitude that extends back toward the players and organization.

“There’s been times where them being in the playoffs have kept the electricity on in my place,” Dolan said. “It’s to the bones how passionate we are in this town for our sports teams. It’s a part of everything.”