Ronald Kilpatrick Sr.

1939 - 2022

Ronald Kilpatrick Sr.
01/23/1939 - 12/28/2022
Ron was born at home in Catoosa, OK during a snowstorm on January 23, 1939 and died peacefully, surrounded by his family, on December 28, 2022 of an aggressive form of cancer only diagnosed two weeks prior. He was 83 years old.

Ron was a health insurance pioneer, recognized as a great innovator throughout his career. He was a natural born dealmaker who was at his best outside the office, shaking hands, making friends, doing favors and making deals. He was known as "Killer" by his friends and "D" by his children. Ron leaves a tremendous legacy.

Ron's father was a plumber and pipe fitter who moved from town to town to find work. When the United States entered WWII in 1941, Ron's parents moved to California to work in the shipyards. Ron moved in with his maternal grandparents in Roff, OK where he lived for four years until his parents returned. He spent fifth and sixth grade in Dallas then moved to Barnwell, SC where his dad worked on the construction of the Savannah River Hydrogen Bomb Plant. Ron slept on a couch in a government furnished traveler. Barnwell's population grew from 2,500 to 13,000 residents overnight. Unable to accommodate the influx, the local middle school separated the students into morning and afternoon shifts. The students like Ron who played sports attended the morning shift so they could practice in the afternoons. Ron moved to Harlingen, TX in the middle of ninth grade and became well-liked by his teachers and classmates. He had two daily newspaper routes and spent his summers working 12-hour shifts seven days a week at the local cotton gin.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend his senior year of high school, while riding home from an evening in Mexico with five of his friends, Ron was in a horrific car accident that took the life of four friends and nearly his. He spent the next four months alone at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston living between surgeries and endless self-pity. His doctor, who assumed the role of father-figure, treated his mental state by forcing him to work three hours a day in the hospital's pediatric burn unit. He learned there are so many others who were in worse shape. He returned home in March to test out of his senior year and traveled back to Galveston by bus each weekend for surgeries. The experience molded his character with an immense capacity for compassion and empathy.

Ron started college at Texas A&I in Kingsville but quickly decided he was not ready and enlisted in the Air Force. He trained as an interceptor who eventually earned crypto top-secret clearance and worked in the war room at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, CA.

After leaving the Air Force, Ron found his way back to Harlingen selling cars. In 1964, he was lured into the insurance business by a local agent named Lloyd Pratt. Within a couple of years, he discovered his passion for group health insurance and talked his way into a job at Pan American Life in San Antonio selling group health insurance. He rapidly excelled and, in 1969, was promoted to District Manager in Houston. In 1970, a new type of group health insurance program-the Multiple Employer Trust-emerged. Ron saw the future and found his calling. Recognizing the opportunity to bring these plans to small employers with less than 10 employees who were unserved by the existing marketplace, Ron helped develop one of the first group health trusts for small employers in the nation. He started his own agency in 1972 and bargained for exclusive marketing rights. He was 32 years old. The agency, now known as Kilpatrick Companies, recruited and trained insurance agents and agencies across the southern US and grew the program to the largest of its kind in the country. The distribution system he helped innovate in the 1970s became the dominant system across the country and used by the industry today.

Ron married Jackie Chambers in December 1979. Jackie joined the agency in 1984. Working together, the agency evolved with the industry, pursuing new ideas as opportunities emerged. The agency introduced one of the first PPO products in Texas, launched the first HMO available to small employers, pioneered the first occupational accident product written in the state, and sold unique accident deductible buyback programs for the largest offshore drillers and many national airlines. Ron and Jackie retired in 2012 when they sold the agency to their sons who continue its innovation-minded legacy.

Ron was a first-principles thinker with a talent for simplifying complicated issues. He was a tough man with a gentle soul, magnetic personality, and an infinite capacity for goodness and generosity. Throughout his adult life, he supported many different charities including the 100 Club, International Fellowship of Christian & Jews, St Jude, Star of Hope, Operation Smile, Mercy Ships, Salvation Army, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Shriners Hospital, the Wounded Warrior Project and was a past director for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Ron funded many people in start-up businesses and supported their efforts with sage advice.

Ron is preceded in death by his parents, William and Valera Banks Kilpatrick, and his grandparents, Arby and Ina Lovelace Banks. He is survived by his sons, Ronnie Kilpatrick and his wife, Danielle Clooney Kilpatrick, Scott Kilpatrick and his wife Kathy Slough Kilpatrick, six grandchildren, and the mother of his children, Jackie Kilpatrick.

In lieu of customary remembrances, please direct memorial contributions to a charity of your choice or the one most special to Ron, St Jude Children's Research Hospital at https://www.stjude.org.