Mariellen Lannon Kristol, 77, of Jacksonville, Fla., passed away Saturday November 23, 1919 at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Jacksonville.
She was born December 19, 1942 in Eldorado, Ark. to the late Marjorie Reardon Lannon and Thomas Ryder Lannon Jr.
She grew up in Amelia Island and went to Fernandina Beach High School, Class of 1960, where she was a proud drum majorette. She married Bobbie Ingram soon after and was gifted with a daughter, Suzanne Ingram, and later two beautiful sons, Robert Ray Ingram (wife, Leslie Burgess) of Dallas, Ga. and Thomas Ryder Ingram. After the untimely death of her husband, she began studies in Jacksonville while raising three children on her own.
After graduating from Jacksonville University in 1971 with a degree in elementary education and a minor in psychology, she first began teaching in the Duval County schools. After leaving the schools, she began her America First Insurance Agency, the first female insurance agency in Jacksonville. She successfully managed this multiple-line insurance company employing up to three full-time employees and two sales agents. She represented Jefferson-Pilot Independent Life and Peninsula Life and acquired a licensed agency with United States Fidelity & Guaranty (USF&G). Notable achievements were her selling more than $1 million in life and health insurance in 1985. She achieved the President’s Club in 1983 and won Agent of the Quarter in 1983.
Her life’s journey took many twists and turns with many ups and downs that made her so very resilient – so much so that she was able to use her unusual gifts to think and create through the many twists and turns of her life.
In 1986, she became president of American Training Institute in Jacksonville, where she played a prominent role in the soliciting of new business and consulting contracts.
She obtained what became a nine-year contract with the Florida Department of Corrections delivering in-depth trainings programs in several areas. She also co-facilitated “Train the Trainer in Human Diversity” for Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties’ law enforcement departments. She also co-designed and implemented a cultural diversity instructional program for the President’s Task Force of Florida Community Colleges at Jacksonville (now FSCJ). In 1992, she also co-delivered a presentation to the eighth annual International Criminal Justice Trainers Conference in Orlando, Fla.
She returned in the late-1990s to study acupuncture at what is now Dragon Rises School in Gainesville, Fla., became licensed in Florida in 1998, and practiced in Jacksonville as an acupuncture physician. She was also a Reiki Master, psychospiritual healer and became an expert certified in hypnosis. She was also certified in the Toyo Hari System of “needless acupuncture” in 1998.
In 1987, she married Dr. Bruce Ivan Kristol of Jacksonville, who is a clinical psychologist.
Along with her husband, she co-hosted the AT&T Broadband community show “Pathways,” presenting and interviewing hundreds of guest experts illuminating traditional and non-traditional healing arts and sciences.
In addition to her parents and her first husband, she was predeceased by her son, Thomas Ryder Ingram in 2015.
Mariellen leaves behind her spouse of 32 years, Bruce Ivan Kristol, and children, Suzanne Ingram of Jacksonville and Robert Ray Ingram (wife, Leslie Burgess; stepdaughter, Paige Moudry, and her daughter, Lana) of Dallas, Ga.
A gathering to remember and celebrate Mariellen’s remarkable life will be held 1-3 p.m. Sunday, December 8, 2019 at the Florida House Inn, 22 S. Third St., Fernandina Beach.
Her footprints on the pathways of all who knew her will be lifelong and enduring. While life always goes on, none of us will be the same because of Mariellen’s influence. We will all be better versions of ourselves because of her and her spirit and love will endure through each of us.
Please share your memories and condolences at www.oxleyheard.com.
Oxley-Heard Funeral Directors