Ann Elaine Schwartz of Overland Park, Kansas, passed away on July 24, 2026, at Saint Luke’s Hospice House in Kansas City at the age of eighty, with her husband and son by her side. 

Ann was born on September 12, 1945, in Hillsboro, Kansas, to Dr. Hermann F. Janzen and Gwen (Galle) Janzen, the third of their four children to survive infancy. She was delivered by her father, one of two physicians practicing in Hillsboro at that time. Her very earliest year or two she lived with her parents and older brother and sister in an apartment on the second floor of the building on Main Street that housed her father’s office, before the family moved to their first house in Hillsboro. For all her years, she fondly remembered playing with her many Galle cousins on summer days at the Galle family farm outside Hillsboro, where she and her siblings were known as the “city cousins.” 

She attended the public schools in Hillsboro through high school, and then attended Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas for two years. In 1966 she moved to Fairway, Kansas to live with her older brother, Bob, and his wife, Rae, and worked as a nurse’s aide at Research Hospital. While living there, she met her future husband, David Schwartz, while visiting a friend in Lawrence. They were married on May 4, 1967. In 1970 she moved with her husband to Vermont, where they lived for almost ten years, and where their son, Jesse, was born in 1973. There she began a career of service and caring for others which spanned four decades, first in the personnel department of the State of Vermont, and then at Washington County Mental Health Services. She stayed in touch with some of the friends she made in Vermont for the rest of her life. While living and working there, she attended Antioch New England College and earned a bachelor's degree and an M. Ed. Degree. 

Late in 1979, Ann moved with her husband and son back to Kansas, where they hoped to be of help to their parents—her father having just retired at the age of eighty-eight. They lived in Overland Park for most of the next forty-six years. She worked at Johnson County Community College for twenty-six years, retiring in 2007. For most of those years she worked as a counselor in the Academic Advising Center, guiding many, many hundreds of students on a path to success in college and in their careers. 

Ann was preceded in death by her parents and an older brother, who died in infancy. She is survived by her husband, David, and their son, Jesse (Amber); her grandchildren, Hayden and Logan; her sister Mary Janzen Quinn; her brothers Bob Janzen (Rae) and David Janzen (Diane); and a number of nieces, nephews, and cousins. 

Ann lived a life of loving and caring for others. She will be missed by her many friends and colleagues, and sorely missed by her family for all of their days.