Life sketch written by Braedon for Ivan’s memorial.

Ivan Andrew Alldridge was born December 29, 1979. It was snowing outside so bad that there had been several road closures and it was more than a challenge for Heather and Angelo Alldridge to get to the hospital once Heather felt Ivan coming. Not to mention that it was a Saturday and the city was busy as ever. Neither of them recalls much about how they did actually get there, though Angelo still believes he deserved more than one traffic ticket that day.

Ivan was born 3 days early. The Alldridges were expecting a little New Year’s baby, but were satisfied with their little tax deduction instead. They were able to take him home on New Year’s Eve and celebrated their first holiday as a family.

For the next three years Angelo, Heather, and Ivan lived in Manhattan New York. Angelo worked as a criminal defense lawyer while Heather stayed home to care for Ivan. Manhattan was a busy place to try to raise a child. Heather took Ivan to many children’s activities that the city offered, her favorites being story time at the library and walks in the park with stops to feed the birds.

On Sundays, Heather took Ivan to a nondenominational church gathering at a local community center. They had a short sermon, and a long worship segment. This was where Ivan met his first love, music.

Heather can tell many stories about Ivan standing in the isles, clapping his hands, bobbing his head and seemingly truly enjoying the performances. He was known as “the cute, little dancing toddler.”

In the spring of 1983, Angelo and Heather had a falling out. Heather and Ivan moved across country to Idaho to live with Heather’s sister and her family until things with Angelo boiled down.

It turned out that Heather and Ivan both very much-liked Idaho. So they bought a nice house and Heather took a job teaching third grade at a local elementary. Within a few days Ivan would meet his second love, Kaitee.

Kaitee recounted her first meeting with Ivan as both good and bad. There is a schoolyard behind their houses, and in that schoolyard is a sandbox. She recalls peering through the wire fence of her yard at a young boy pushing trucks through the sand. She climbed the fence and went over and asked to join him. Ivan agreed and handed her a small dump truck, “You have to carry the dirt,” he instructed her. She said okay and they began pushing around some sand. It wasn’t long before Ivan ran over her fingers with his bulldozer. Her eyes welled with tears and she was ready to burst out crying. Ivan quickly grabbed her hand and held it gently, saying, “I sorry, I sorry. Please don’t cry.” Kaitee says she cried anyway, but still remembers how concerned and sweet he was over the accident.

Years later Ivan remembered the incident as well. After his last cancer diagnosis he and Kaitee were sitting on his couch. Ivan had just given her the bad news and asked her to continue to stand by him. She promptly agreed and assured him that she would never leave. “You’ve always carried my dirt,” he told her quietly. She looked at him with eyes full of tears and he quickly grabbed her hands and pulled her into a tight embrace saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.”

What they both realized was that every flower must grow through dirt.

Ivan and Kaitee met Chris in the first grade. They learned that he too lived on the block and the three of them could often be found building castles out of sand in that same place of the school yard. In third grade they met Tony and Tommy and they too were added to the sandbox crew. Ivan’s mom would joke, “They probably played in the same sandbox in Heaven too,” because of how well they got along.

Ivan excelled in school. He had a tremendous ability at English and could always make up an entertaining story at any given moment. As he grew older his love for creative writing shifted to a love for poetry and eventually for song writing. Some of the best music he and his friends produced came from his battered old high school journals.

Ivan’s earliest talent, however, came in the form of an old upright piano in the basement of the church he and his mother attended in Idaho. After the service Heather would mingle with some of the other women and Ivan often snuck away from the nursery group and found his way to the piano, where he would ping out songs sounding almost identical to those of the morning’s worship.

Heather caught on to this, eventually, and for his sixth Christmas she bought a newer, nicer upright piano for their living room. Ivan’s talent grew exponentially, and he often ended up teaching the teachers she would hire for him. Consequently, ten Christmases later, with the help of Ivan’s father, that old upright was moved to the basement and replaced with a baby grand, also known as Ivan’s third love.

In junior high school, Ivan, Kaitee, Chris, Tommy, and Tony all joined band or orchestra in the school and began developing their musical talents. Within a few years they had each found their specialty and each knew they could produce something special.

Just before Christmas when Ivan was 14 and in the eighth grade he became very sick. At first it was diagnosed as a cold, which grew into the flu, and when that flu didn’t go away for two weeks Heather started looking for a specialist. Within another week Ivan was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer that attacks the lymph nodes. They had caught it fairly early and his prognosis was good. He underwent three months of intense chemotherapy. He lost his hair; he missed a lot of school. But his best friends stood by him, bald and cheerful just like him. By Spring the doctors declared him to be in remission and his hair grew back, his strength returned and he made it into high school.

When he was 15, my family bought a house directly across the street from his. My mother and his became quick friends and I got to know Ivan, Kaitee, and the guys. They were high schoolers, and I was just setting foot in junior high. I was shocked they even recognized my presence. But that’s the kind of kids they are, they always make a person feel welcome and accepted.

The following year Ivan fell sick again. This time he had regular checkups with his oncologist ever 3-6 months, so when he became sick, they knew what it was right away, and attacked it right away. This time the lymphoma was more centralized in his chest areas and he underwent chemotherapy and radiation. The hair fell out again, and Chris, Tony, and Tommy brought out the razors.

In the middle of his treatment cycle, my mother passed away suddenly. It affected my family greatly, as can be imagined, and I fell into a pretty deep stupor. Even though he and Heather were primarily concerned with his health, they became my family’s biggest supporters in our time of grief. There would be days when Ivan couldn’t get out of bed, but he still invited me over to talk. He took me under his wing, and made me feel like a little brother to him and his buddies. By the time his treatment concluded and he was again declared in remission, they had adopted me as a full-fledged member of their group.

During Ivan’s first round with cancer he met a man named Marcus, who was a friend of his youth pastor. Ivan’s mother was concerned that he didn’t have a powerful male role model and had been working with Jason, the youth pastor, to find someone with whom Ivan would open up to. Marcus was this person. He was more than a confidant to Ivan, but support for the rest of the kids in the group also. He also became their greatest link to the most important thing in their life, God.

Each of them went to church on Sunday, stayed out of trouble, but none really knew the true worth of Christianity until Marcus came into their lives. He wasn’t a preacher or anything like that, just someone who understood his faith and was willing to share it. Ivan saw how happy Marcus was in his life due to his faith, and wanted to emulate that. Soon, the others wanted to emulate Ivan.

With his newfound faith, Ivan decided a perfect way of sharing his inspiration would be through music. He remembered the worship sessions of his earliest days, and wanted to be able to bring that sort of joy to other people. Through that, Tuned was formed.

The beginnings were rough, but by the time Ivan made it through the second cancer challenge, Tuned was a true worship band. They had a standing invitation to play at youth gatherings two Tuesdays a month, and to be the worship band for a local church one Sunday a month. Not to mention all the other invitations they received.

Tuned was our life. Every emotion, every challenge, every joy and every heartache we experienced was expressed through the music of Tuned. We prayed that through it other lives were touched and spirits lifted. But most of all we prayed that we were serving God well, and doing what He would have us do.

Ivan, Chris, Kaitee, Tommy, and Tony all graduated from high school in 1998 and went on to college together. None of them were really sure why they were compelled to stay together for college, but just knew it was the right thing to do at that time. Unknown reasons were soon revealed.

As we all know, Ivan was again diagnosed with cancer the week of Thanksgiving 1998. He began chemotherapy immediately, but by Christmas he had enough. He knew that his days were numbered, and he wanted to be able to spend them happy and without the downing effects of cancer treatment. It was a gut wrenching decision, but Ivan decided to cease treatment and hand it over to God.

In April, he proposed to his love, Kaitee, and she accepted. At the end of the month they found out she was pregnant. We all prayed that these things would give Ivan’s body the strength and encouragement to hang on until both events could take place.

In May, Tuned had a grand concert, in a real hall, with a real audience. There was a suggested donation, with all proceeds going towards the American Cancer Foundation, the hall and its amenities had been donated for their use.

Unfortunately, this concert took a lot out of Ivan. He managed to make it through the end of the school year, and spent the next few months relaxing at home with his closest friends and family.

By August, his time had come. We gathered the friends and family and each person got to spend some final time with him. It was time not ill spent. And each of us was amazed and grateful that he had at least out lived the doctor’s expectations.

In the evening of August 19, Ivan returned to his Heavenly Father, at peace, at last.