'He was so generous and so genuine to everyone'

The family of a much-loved Derry man who died suddenly while on holiday in Spain is to hold a special fundraiser in his memory.

Kevin Lyttle took ill from a suspected heart attack while relaxing with his wife Mary and a group of friends at a villa in Marbella in May of last year. He was taken to hospital but was sadly pronounced dead later that evening.

Kevin's wife Mary and his daughters Sharon, Hannah and Sarah-Jane have decided to mark his first anniverary with a special evening of music, song and craic, with the money raised going to the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust, a charity that helps families alleviate the finanical burden of bringing a loved one who has died abroad in sudden or tragic circumstances back home to Ireland.

Kevin Bell was a young Newry man who was killed in a hit-and-run collision in New York in 2013. The charity was born out of his parents' fundraising efforts to bring the body of their son home and has since helped repatriate more than 1,500 Irish people who have died overseas.

The Lyttle family chose the charity as the beneficiary of the fundraiser to raise awareness of the difficulties families endure when faced with the sudden death of a loved one abroad.

Kevin's daughter Hannah told Derry Now: "I've gone away on holidays before and had no insurance, and I live in Australia now and so for me and my friends, any of us could need help like that at any point.

"I had known about the Kevin Bell for a good few years after it first came up on my Facebook randomly. Daddy died on the Friday and I was meant to be going to a fundraiser on the Saturday in Co Down because one of my really good friends, her uncle died in the Phillipines, so I've always known about the charity.

"I rang Colin (Bell) the next morning after Daddy passed away in spain and asked him, 'how do we go about this?' Luckily we didn't need their financial help as Mammy and Daddy had travel insurance, but he gave us all the right information about where to go and who to contact because no-one in our family had ever had to deal with something like this before."

FAMILY MAN: Kevin with his wife Mary, daughters Sharon, Hannah and Sarah-Jane, granddaughters Erin and Mollie and goddaughter Maria.

Kevin's wife Mary described the added trauma of being away in a foreign country while trying to cope with the profound shock and grief of her husband's sudden death.

She told us: "When he passed away that evening in Spain, I didn't feel as if I got any support at all in the hospital; their English was not great.

"Kevin's life support was turned off on the Friday night. I was very lucky because I had family there. My sister and two cousins; there were 14 of us altogether, all family and friends.

"I came home on the Sunday, which was when we had planned to come back. But Kevin didn't come home until the Tuesday week after he passed away. He was buried two weeks to the day he died."

And though the financial cost of repatriating Kevin's remains was covered by his insurance, it was the bureaucracy the family had to deal with that makes them so aware of the importance of a charity such as the Kevin Bell Trust.

Hannah explained: "Mammy had to fill out loads of papers, and then the waiting for medical certificates and waiting for them to release the body.

"The preliminary findings of the autopsy came back as inconclusive. We could have had another autopsy in Ireland, but that would have meant waiting until the following weekend, and at that point we just wanted to get him home.

"Even after Daddy came home, Mammy was still getting bills from the hospital and she had to keep sending them to the insurance people. And even now we are still having to email the authorities in Spain trying to get the full autospy report.

Mary with daughters Hannah (left) and Sarah-Jane.

"Having to deal with all that stuff is another reason we think the Kevin Bell is such a good charity, because they do so much for families who have to go through this."

And, despite the sadness of losing a beloved husband, father and grandfather, the family hopes the fundraiser, which will feature popular Derry entertainer Mickey Doherty, will be a joyous celebration of Kevin's life.

Said Mary: "Kevin was an 'old Brandywell' man, from Hamilton Street.

"It's uncanny, because that April, we had a wedding in America and he said to me, 'Mary, I'm not going back to America', and I said, 'look Kevin, it's probably the last family holiday we'll have because the girls will be going their own way', not thinking what was ahead of us. We had a ball, the five of us and Sarah Jane's boyfriend Ben.

"Three of my cousins came back for the funeral, he was very well thought of out there. Everybody loved him, all his nieces and nephews. At the wake, standing out in that street there was big grown men crying their hearts out; they just couldn't believe that their uncle Kevin was away.

"We would have been married 30 years that September. Kevin, unbeknownst to me, had been planning a cruise up in the fjords for us, as that's something he always wanted to do.

"It's still hard to believe; I keep expecting him to walk through that door."

His daughter Sarah-Jane said he was a loving father who was always there to offer his help and expertise. A skilled mechanic, he would give her car a 'mini-MOT' any time she was home from Belfast.

She added: "Since he died, there's a fight every couple of weeks over who's going to cut the grass. That was his job, and I don't know how he was able to stand on that banking and manoeuvre a lawnmover down it without falling; Daddy was 73, but he didn't think he was the age he was.

"He was such a kind person - the only selfish thing he's ever done in his life was to die in a different country."

Hannah agreed: "He was far too good to all of us. Mammy would say no so we would go to Daddy and ask to do this or that, and he was always, 'ok'. He was so generous and so genuine, not just to us but to his nieces and nephews, to everyone.

"You would just ring him and he would do anything for you.

"It's awful what happened to Daddy, but he never would have wanted to be left lying sick.

"He literally died having a ball, with Mammy and all his friends around him."

Kevin's fundraiser takes place at the Halfway House, Tooban, on Friday May 19 at 7pm. Anyone who cannot attend can donate if they wish via https://www.gofundme.com/f/kevin-lyttle.