Kyle Ingram-Baldwin, the ARN Business Development Manager for the South of England, died on Monday, June 16, aged 40. Gordon Johnston, his boss and his close friend, shares his thoughts and his heartbreak on the occasion of this terrible loss.
Kyle was the first person that I hired for ARN, in October 2021. We became really close and not just as colleagues, but as close friends. He was about to begin another 3 months of treatment and just last week, we were working out how we could manage that. I’m looking at an e-mail from him now, the last one he sent me: he wrote, ‘appreciate all your support ‘. He added a heart emoji.
Now, our focus is solely on the well-being of Becky and the family. He leaves behind 4 children, aged twelve, nine, three and one. He only just turned 40 this year.
—————–
I was at Newcastle Races for an event when he phoned me saying, ‘I just wanted to pick your brains. I’ve been getting these pains in my stomach for quite a while now and I know you had a similar issue. What do you think it is?” And I was like, ‘well, look: firstly, you’ve got to go to the doctor’s because I’m not a medical man but in my case, it turned out to be stress related and I think it’s more than likely that yours will be, too.’
How wrong can you be? He went to the doctors and quickly got diagnosed with bowel cancer. It had spread to his liver. If he felt sorry for himself, he didn’t show it. On the contrary, he got busy on LinkedIn, sharing his diagnosis and imploring people to get checked over as soon as possible, if they were experiencing any kind of pain that they couldn’t identify. He told me that if he could encourage just one person to get checked over and because of that, get an early diagnosis, it would be worth it.
When Kyle got together with his customers, more often than not as soon as the business element was out of the way, the conversation turned to football… He was a complete Liverpool fanatic. You rarely saw him without his LFC clobber on.
Just last month, he took his eldest son to Liverpool’s victory parade.
It sounds like a cliché, but Kyle really was a pillar of his community. Many of you will know that he came up with a unique way of helping men in his local area – Minster, near Ramsgate in Kent. It was called ‘Project Talking Football’. He provided a means for men who were suffering from mental health problems; men who were going through things like job loss, bereavement, break-ups, all sorts. They met every week, played football and chatted about how they were doing.
When he told me about it I was intrigued so he invited me along to a session. It began with the guys in a circle. They were asked to rate how they were feeling, on a scale from one to ten. When I was there, there were a lot of twos and threes, but at the end of the evening, when the circle reformed, those numbers had risen to sixes and sevens. I saw for myself that Project Talking Football was tangibly making its participants feel better.
—————–
Kyle was all about helping other people. He was the genuine article, expecting nothing in return. And the term ‘dedicated family man’ doesn’t do justice to the way he lived for his adored wife and kids.
We did what we could to create memories for him during his battle against cancer. Through a contact I had, we were able to reach out to Liverpool legend Jordan Henderson about his plight and he graciously signed and dedicated some photographs for him, and wished him well on the journey through his treatment. We presented them to Kyle on what proved to be his second last team meeting, which was just great.
Jordan concluded his note to Kyle with ‘remember, you’ll never walk alone.’ Maybe someday soon I’ll be able to find a crumb of comfort in the knowledge that Kyle never did walk alone.
The fact is that one of life’s genuine givers has been taken from us. Rest in peace my mate.
Gordon.
Gordon Johnston is Sales Director at ARN.
ARN has been inundated with calls from industry colleagues and well wishers, many of whom expressed a wish to send Becky and the kids floral tributes and cards of condolence. Please don’t do that. What the family needs now is financial support. Kyle had been trying to raise funds to go and get treatment abroad. Becky has chosen to refund that money, despite the fact that the family is clearly in need of help. A Just Giving page has been set up for that purpose. Please, give what you can. The contact details are below. Thank-you.
To give what you can, please click HERE
Add Comment