The daughter of ex-Miami Marlins president David Samson has died after a months-long battle with brain cancer, the former executive announced on Wednesday, June 24.
“Yesterday, my daughter, Kyra, passed away peacefully after a 9 month and 11 day fight against one of the cruelest diseases I’ve ever seen up close,” David, 58, shared via X. “She was diagnosed with brain cancer, specifically Glioblastoma. I have felt all of your concern and love for these months and wasn’t ready to be anymore specific than I was.”
He continued, “Kyra was a 28-year-old young woman who loved deeply and who is impossible to describe in 280 characters. While her life got stolen from her, she handled these months with courage, poise, and resolve. And all I want is for no family to feel what we feel today. For no young person to suffer the way she did.”
David also requested that in lieu of flowers, people make a memorial gift to The Kyra Fund, whose website says it will “support a new immunotherapy research project focused on glioblastoma” in partnership with the Glioblastoma Research Organization.
The fund has raised more than $27,000 out of its $100,000 goal as of this writing.
David first announced his daughter’s diagnosis in September after a two-week absence from his “Nothing Personal” podcast.
“I’ve been gone for two weeks as my family has been dealing with a critical situation,” he said. “I have a daughter who is seriously ill, and it came out of nowhere. I have been spending the last two weeks trying to figure out how to do the only thing that matters, which is to take care of her and my other children and my family.”
David continued, “I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I wasn’t ready to think about it other than to do what was in front of me, which was to figure out how to deal with something that is unthinkable, unimaginable, can’t be happening. And you open your eyes 24 hours a day, and it happens. It’s in front of you. There’s nothing you can do. There’s no escape from the nightmare of a life changing in the blink of an eye. And that’s what happened.”
He added that before Kyra’s diagnosis, he thought his identity came from his career.
“Turns out it was all just wrong,” David admitted. “Turns out what defines me is trying to protect the people I love more than anything in the world…Talking about the amount of love and desire for that child to have a life that they want … and then all of a sudden the wrong phone call comes, and it’s done. There is no more control.”
David worked for the Marlins from 2002 to 2017, winning a World Series with the club in 2003. He’s also known for being the first one voted out of Survivor: Cagayan, one of the show’s most popular seasons, in 2013. He began hosting “Nothing Personal” in 2019 and is a frequent guest on the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast.
