Janice Irene Schramm Hultman

Janice Irene Schramm Hultman

May 11, 1953-October 6, 2026

Jan Hultman passed away peacefully on October 6, 2026, surrounded by her immediate family members after a complex battle with cancer. She was ushered Home in song, as her husband and kids sang “Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King.”

Jan’s life contained multitudes and her legacy will live on through countless lives she touched. In more than three decades of SAC/SAU Swim Camp, hundreds of local children received Red Cross swim lessons under Jan’s leadership. Having taught swim lessons at a backyard pool throughout college, Jan created the SAC Swim Camp program in 1984 in conjunction with emerging summer camp programs at Spring Arbor College. By the final season in 2018, a number of kids who had participated in Swim Camp had also grown up and become instructors, aides, and lifeguards for the program, including her two daughters, Kriss and Kati. Some early alums even sent their own children through the program. Jan especially relished the opportunity to have her first grandson, Packi, in swim lessons a couple of summers.

When Jan was not in the pool, she moonlighted as a high school musical choreographer at both Lumen Christi High School and Western High School in Parma, MI. Drawing on a handful of ballet lessons she took as a child and her own experiences in show choir and musicals growing up, Jan showed a great deal of self-assurance jumping into the world of choreography with actually no experience in choreography. With a career spanning the late 1980’s to the early 2000’s, Jan always stood by the fact that her headband and leg warmers were not only a fashion statement but also “actually very functional.”

Jan was delighted to extend her love for music and dance into her church life as well. She loved leading youth choirs and choreographing children’s musicals at Spring Arbor Free Methodist Church, where she and her husband, Ron, were members for nearly 40 years. At a time when dancing was not widely embraced, Jan took great pride in bringing “rhythmic movement” into the church and in the triumph of orchestrating the first (and maybe only) color guard flag routine for a special music youth choir performance of “Lift High the Lord, Our Banner!” Jan deeply believed in the spirit of Psalm 149:3 “Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him...”

Meanwhile, Jan was also leaving her mark on the lives of hundreds of post-traditional college students in her more than 30-year career in higher education. Whether she was advising students, teaching writing or adult development, or guiding students through the prior learning assessment program, Jan was known to her students as aknowledgeable, articulate, and kind advocate for adult students. She also developed quite a reputation for her humor, whether that be in inter-office hijinx or in the infamous song-parody duo with her long-time colleague, Rob. Good luck getting this line out of your head when you sing it to the tune of Amy Grant’s “Baby, Baby”--

“Bebe, Bebe, we really oughta warn ya, your Starbucks will cost more in California!”

Of course the impact most meaningful to Jan was the one she had on the lives of her loved ones. She was a pragmatist, yes, but she always maintained that loving people was the most important part of life. Creating a home that was welcoming to neighborhood friends, office Christmas parties, teenage hangouts, and countless sleepovers for her daughters, Jan’s incredible ability to put people at ease set the utmost example in hospitality and care for others. From Jan’s perspective, there was always room for one more chair at the table.

Her loving husband of 52 years, Ron, will forever treasure the half-century of deep friendship and love he and Jan shared. Her unwavering commitment to their family inspired and anchored him throughout their lives together. Her daughters hold immense gratitude for a mom who listened to and loved them so well and who was guided by the motto “teenagers are people too.” As their family expanded, Jan extended her love for her grandchildren in both practical and sentimental ways, whether that be through matching Christmas PJ’s, new sneakers every fall, or “Thursdays at Three with Nonna” during the pandemic shutdown. Her sons-in-law Geoff and Brad will always hold gratitude for the ways that Jan welcomed them into the fold and helped them feel like a part of the family.

Jan Hultman was a force. She was smart and resourceful. She was a problem solver and a pragmatist to her core. She was also the first to feel a tear roll down her cheek while worshiping at church. She sometimes said that she felt part of her purpose on this earth was to make people laugh. If you knew her, she probably did just that–most likely more than a time or two. She loved the water and “lake-sitting” at Somerset Beach Campground. She considered it a gift from God to move into a home with a pond in back after her retirement. She had an incredible knack for creating the most elaborate and coordinated tablescapes at holidays (“too matchy-matchy?”). She was a self-taught seamstress who handmade her own bridesmaid dresses, sewed and cross-stitched numerous personalized aprons for her children and their childhood friends, brought many a special occasion dress vision to reality, and hemmed too many pants and skirts to count. She loved doting on her grandchildren and teasing her sons-in-law. She often seemed almost surprised that her two daughters “turned out to be, like, really cool adults,” as though she didn’t play a pivotal role in that journey. She was a grammar guru and elite proof-reader (three PhD dissertations have been published as proof), and she would probably have rolled her eyes at how not-at-all-succinct this tribute is. She was silly and smart, practical and sentimental, firm and fair, daughter, sister, wife, mama, mother-in-law, and Nonna extraordinaire. To say she will be missed is a grand understatement.

Jan is preceded in death by her parents, Marvin and Beatrice (Griffin) Schramm and her brother-in-law Walter Edward Drew. She is survived by her two sisters, Ellen (Roger) Priest and Rose Drew, her husband, Ron Hultman, her daughters Kristina (Geoff) Whiteman and Kathryn (Brad) Hultman-Schlabach, three grandchildren, Patrick Whiteman, Griffin and Lyla Hultman-Schlabach, and several nieces, nephews, great, and great-great, nieces and nephews.

A Celebration of Life will be held on Thursday, October 15 at The Arbor Church (120 E. Main St., Spring Arbor, MI). Visitation with Family: 10:00 a.m., Celebration Service 11:00 a.m., Luncheon immediately following the service. Friends and family are also invited to join us at Somerset Beach Campground at 6:00 pm for a little lake-sitting and a campfire in Jan’s honor. BYO KFC dinner if you’d like.

In lieu of flowers, loved ones are encouraged to make a memorial donation to Somerset Beach Campground or The American Red Cross.

Arrangements and care entrusted to Hess Funeral Home and Cremation Services of Fort Wayne, IN.