Friends remember mother and two sons killed in Kansas crash with wrong-way driver

Lydia P. Barton overcame a lot early in life, including battling homelessness while living with her mother as a teen and finishing high school in Wichita after having her first child.

Through it all, Barton was known to have a heart of gold.

Sora Wright tried to warn Barton in elementary school at Haysville that playing with her would get her ostracized because Wright is Black.

“And she said ‘well that is a stupid reason because you are awesome,’” Wright recalls Barton saying, adding that Barton’s home was her first-ever sleepover.

The two became the best of friends with many sleepovers to follow.

Morgan Gamble said she was constantly bullied in middle school at Haysville. Barton one day intervened and told the person to stop and invited Gamble along for a sleepover with her and Wright.

“She was one of the first people who was kind to me,” Gamble said.

Barton and her oldest and youngest children, 13-year-old Jesse Kinney and 7-year-old Ronan Harding , died after being hit head-on by a driver going the wrong way early Saturday morning on I-135 in McPherson County.

The 36-year-old Hutchinson man driving the wrong way also died at the scene; a 29-year-old Hutchinson man in his vehicle was seriously injured.

The cause of the crash is still being investigated, Kansas Highway Patrol trooper Ben Gardner said Wednesday, adding that an autopsy is still being done on the 36-year-old Hutchinson man as well.

Barton had been heading back to Monument, Colorado, where she had lived the past couple years after moving there from Wichita, after dropping off her middle child and only daughter, Kaelee Kinney, when the crash happened, Wright said.

She was 31.

Funeral services are pending for the mother and her two boys.

Friends and people she had worked with wrote on social media about her kindness and how good of a mother she was to her children. They also wrote about the wit of her boys.

Lydia “was an amazing lady and incredible mother,” Karen Lippoldt, who has been a longtime friend of Barton’s husband, wrote on Facebook. “I will miss our conversations for sure. She was always with a joke or silly story at the ready.”

She also wrote that Jesse was “incredibly smart.”

“Little Ronan,” she wrote. “This is a tough one. So young and already had overcome so many things and so ridiculously smart. It was seriously like sitting with a 40 yo man when having a conversation.”

She said he once told her he couldn’t call her Nana, which other kids did, because he already had one, but he could call her grandma or Karen.

Wright also said Ronan had “complex reasoning skills.”

She said that Jesse would call her by a name that only Barton was allowed to and then hit a floss dance on her.

“Ornery,” she said with a laugh.

She said he loved video games and would crack Fortnite jokes on her.

Wright also loves video games, so the two bonded over the shared passion. She remembered Barton telling her a few years ago that she was throwing a party and Wright had to come.

Wright told her she was playing a game on her PlayStation and would not be coming. Barton insisted she would. Wright is an introvert; Barton was the opposite.

Sure enough, 30 minutes later, as promised, Barton showed up and made Wright come with her but agreed she could bring her PlayStation.

“She was always forcing me out of my shell,” Wright said.

Wright said she played her PlayStation right in the middle of the party, leading someone to ask Barton what was going on.

Barton, who had worked at Wesley Medical Center and as a certified nursing assistant at other places, told them ‘that is my emotional support goblin,’” Wright recalled.

“She was quick to invite people so that people didn’t feel left out,” Wright said.

That included Gamble, who said after Barton intervened on the bully “she just kind of included me in whatever she and Sora were doing.”

“Everyone I’ve talked to has said that she’s one of the nicest people (they’ve) ever met,” Gamble said. “She was always there for everyone when someone needed it. She loved her kids. She was a good person.”

Barton graduated from West High School in 2012, Gamble said.

Wright said Barton liked going on trips and adventures with her children. In June, Barton updated her Facebook cover photo to one of her three children posing at the Royal Gorge in Colorado. Ronan had on a T-Shirt with a T-Rex on it that says “HANGRY” with a Nesquik bottle hanging out of his pocket. The three children each have a big smile.

Wright said Barton couldn’t stand any injustice and never cared what others thought.

“She was always like that,” Wright said. “She was kind. She was funny, and she just couldn’t allow anything that seemed like injustice to pass. She had a big heart. She was always helping people out. She didn’t abide by bullies.”

A GoFundMe has been set up to help with funeral and other related expenses around the loss. It can be found at shorturl.at/DogMO.

This story was originally published January 9, 2025 at 4:35 AM.