Lois Annabelle (Ingle) Kyle

Annabelle Kyle, a woman of sparkle, spunk and unflappable grit, died suddenly on April 22, 2022, in Muncie. She was 90.

Born Lois Annabelle Ingle on January 8, 1932 to Glenn and Alice (Meeks) Ingle of Parker City, Annabelle – as she was known to everyone – grew up with older brother, Max, and young sister Nancy, on a grain and livestock farm with an outhouse, a wood and coal stove and eventually electricity provided through the Rural Electrification Administration.

From there, Annabelle roamed far beyond her farm origins before settling back permanently in Muncie in 2001. At her death, she had been in temporary residence at Westminster Village.

She graduated from Selma High School in 1950, and later helped organize the class’s 50th reunion. It was at high school where she met her dream beau, Walter Woodrow Kyle Jr., “Woody”, and they married shortly after graduating. The couple had two daughters, Cynthia Dawn and Michele Jeanette.

Originally trained as a beauty operator and a snap bookkeeper, Annabelle spent much of her career working with Woody in 15 different business ventures.  Together, they opened the region’s first coin laundries expanded in Muncie, Ohio and Kentucky in the 1950s, had a customized business secretarial operation and other ventures. The couple moved for business to Indianapolis and Terre Haute, traveling to communities in Illinois, Kansas, Texas and Michigan before their last move as a couple to suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She never hesitated to tell people that she had moved 22 times in her first 18 years of marriage.

Following Woody’s death in 1997, Annabelle took control of the precision manufacturing corporation he owned, successfully managing the operation until it was sold in 2000. She then moved back to Muncie.

In Muncie, she joined St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, and the church and its welcoming congregation became her chief community and second home. She was a leader in the church Session, served as an Elder, rarely missed a weekly service, actively participated in Bible Study and all outreach activities, and even became a church employee, assisting the pastor and writing St. Andrews’ regular newsletter. She filled it with everything she heard and sought favorite recipes from everyone she knew. She finally retired from that post at age 88 at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

Annabelle was also active in a variety of other activities over her years of Muncie living, including volunteering at Emens Auditorium, the Muncie Civic Theatre, and serving as a “Book Buddy” for Muncie schools. She loved to listen to young students read aloud.

In the 1980s, Annabelle grew more interested in family history, which ignited a life-long passion for genealogy.  She researched both her Ingle roots and her adopted Kyle families, helping locate the Ohio grave of one of the earliest Kyles to settle in America.  She eagerly dragooned her daughters and son-in-law to various states (as well as to Northern Ireland), to comb through handwritten property records, read centuries old newspaper accounts, and prowl often abandoned cemeteries in any weather searching out graves.

As a result of this work, she published family histories of both the Kyles and the Ingles, as well as a book titled “Glen’s Gleanings” that annotated the 50 years of diaries kept by of her father Glen Ingle. She was active genealogist, researching families of friends and colleagues, and published number of indices that serve as guides to family names in published volumes. Her work is listed in the Library of Congress.

Annabelle was also an active gardener and quilter. She could often be found tending to her favorite raspberry plants, which she called “my babies” and loved giving gifts of the fruit to friends and neighbors. Her last quilting project was to make a set of placemats she designed as gifts for family members for Christmas 2021. She was an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction, stayed current on national and international affairs, and enjoyed concerts, theater, fine dining and the Ball State University homecoming parades.

She loved dressing in bright, sparkling colors for almost every event, adored going to the hair salon and relished her reputation as the firecracker who could get a conversation going or liven up a gathering, often with unexpected results. She moved fast, walking at lightning speed to get to the next chore, the next store, the next adventure. At Westminster, Annabelle even named her rolling walker “Tucker,” to remind her to “tuck in my butt” and stabilize her forward leaning motion to go as fast as she could to the next activity.

She was predeceased by her parents Glen and Alice, her husband Woody, her grandson Evan Kyle Lindstrom, her daughter Michele and her brother Max. She is survived by her daughter Cynthia Kyle and son-in-law John Lindstrom of East Lansing, Michigan; her sister Nancy Parkison (Paul) of Yorktown; her sister-in-law Candy Ingle of Albany; her sister-in-law Ann Kyle Knadle (Michael) of Longwood, Florida; and numerous nephews and nieces.

Friends may visit from 4:00 to 6:00 PM on Thursday April 28th, 2022 at Parson Mortuary and Cremation Center, 801 W. Adams Street, Muncie.  Funeral services will be held on Friday April 29, 2022 at 10:00 AM at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, 2700 W. Moore Road, Muncie.  Friends may call from 9:00 AM to the time of the service. Burial will follow at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, Parker City, Indiana. Pastor Mona Dale will be officiating.

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