If you were fortunate enough to meet Jim Kinhan, you could pretty much count on a friend for life.
So when Kinhan passed away in October after a lengthy battle with colon cancer, the Insider lost a dear friend.
Mr. Jim – as he liked to be called by the students at Beaver Meadow School where he volunteered – always made time for the Insider and it didn’t go unnoticed.
If you sent him an email, he’d respond quickly and always signed off with an inspirational thought. Ask to set up an interview, and he’d rearrange his schedule to accommodate yours. Sit down to talk with him and you’d want to etch out a little extra time before your next appointment.
Kinhan was passionate about life and it was evident in everything he did. And I for one am lucky to have known him, even if it was for a short time.
He became an advocate for death with dignity, making it into the pages of the Washington Post after his nationally televised question of Hilary Clinton.
I was first introduced to Kinhan in the spring of 2014. SoupFest was coming up and he wanted our help getting the word out. And if you ever got him talking about SoupFest, which under his watch grew to SouperFest, you could tell how much the event meant to him.
That same year, Kinhan was chosen as one of Concord On Air’s most fascinating individuals, which is where we learned that he was well versed in the art of speed cup stacking.
So, I got the pleasure of seeing Kinhan teach the Beaver Meadow School Speed Stacking Club. He even gave me a few pointers and set up a challenge so I could try stacking cups as fast as I could (which actually wasn’t very fast) and in turn, have a good story to write.
He even gave me some bread and salt when I moved into my new house. It was a family tradition and it was a nice gesture – especially since I had only known him for about a month.
And the year of Kinhan and the Insider continued that summer, when after he and his partner Ginny Mierins walked about 100 miles during their trip to England to walk the Hadrian’s Wall Path, from Newcastle to Bownes, I got a chance to sit down and go over all the details of the trip.
The two were walkers, it wasn’t out of the ordinary to see them strolling around town, and this was their idea of a fun vacation. It was neat to hear about the trip and all it entailed, which of course included a few unexpected detours and an average of more than nine hours of walking per day.
And each March for the last two years, I found my way to Kinhan’s house for our annual talk about soup – SouperFest that is. He’d always offer me a drink and a snack, and ask about my young daughter even though he never met her. That’s just the kind of guy he was.
It will be a little weird when March rolls around. I’ll miss my annual meeting with Mr. Jim, but we like to think our friend is in a better place these days – walking up a storm, playing golf and thinking soup.
