Long before hospice and home care were widely understood, Lois Jelneck and Ingrid Deininger were helping Ann Arbor families imagine something different.
At a time when many people expected serious illness and end-of-life care to happen in hospitals, Jelneck and Deininger believed people should be able to come home. They believed comfort, dignity and family mattered, especially near the end of life.
“We wanted them to be comfortable bringing them home,” they later recalled in a Life’s Big Moments post about their work. “And I think we succeeded.”
Their work helped shape home-based nursing and hospice care in the Ann Arbor area. Decades later, its influence can still be seen in the caregivers they trained, the families they supported and the organizations that grew from their vision.
For Kathy Hopps, a caregiver who learned from both women, the lessons were not only about care. They were about how to be with someone.
Two Oak Trees
Jelneck and Deininger were recently described in Arbor Hospice’s Life’s Big Moments campaign as “oak trees,” strong, steady and deeply rooted in compassion.
The image fits the way Hopps speaks about them.
Hopps came to know Jelneck and Deininger through caregiving circles connected to Individualized Home Nursing Care. She remembers watching how they moved through a room, taking in not just the person receiving care, but everyone around them.
They noticed things.
They noticed when a family was scared. They noticed when a caregiver needed guidance. They noticed when visitors needed help understanding what a patient could handle. They noticed when a family might need a social worker, a practical resource or simply another person to help carry the weight of what was happening.
That kind of attention stayed with Hopps.
What she learned from Jelneck and Deininger was that caregiving was never only about the task in front of her. It was about the patient, the family, the fear, the love and the questions people did not always know how to ask.
Care Beyond the Bedside
Hospice care is often misunderstood until a family needs it.
It does not mean giving up. It means shifting the focus toward comfort, pain management, emotional support and quality of life when a cure is no longer the goal. It also means supporting relatives who may be exhausted, grieving, uncertain or facing decisions they never expected to make.
Jelneck and Deininger understood that early.
Their work helped families see that home could be a place of care, not just a place people returned to when medical options ran out. With the right support, families could surround loved ones with familiar voices, familiar rooms and the people who mattered most.
Hopps said the two women looked for what would bring peace. Sometimes that meant medical care. Sometimes it meant spiritual support. Sometimes it meant helping a family understand what was happening or connecting them with someone who could help.
Their care reached beyond the bedside because the need did, too.
A Lasting Mark on Hospice Care
Jelneck and Deininger’s work became part of Michigan’s hospice history.
The Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan holds Hospice of Michigan records dating from 1975 to 2003, donated through Hospice of Michigan by Deininger and Jelneck. Their names are tied not only to personal memories, but also to the larger record of how hospice care developed in the state.
According to information provided by Arbor Hospice, Individualized Home Nursing Care later joined Hospice of Michigan in the early 2000s. Arbor Hospice joined in 2016.
Today, Arbor Hospice is part of NorthStar Care Community, which also includes Hospice of Michigan and Centrica Care Navigators.
Marcie Hillary, executive vice president and chief experience officer for NorthStar Care Community, said stories like this show what hospice care is meant to offer: support for people who are seriously ill and for those who love them.
The organization’s Life’s Big Moments campaign highlights the meaningful moments families can still experience during illness, caregiving and end-of-life care.
A Legacy Carried Forward
For Hopps, the example set by Jelneck and Deininger is still alive in the way caregivers show up for families today.
They taught others not just how to care for patients, but how to recognize what people needed, even when those needs were quiet, complicated or hard to name.
That may be why the oak tree image feels so fitting.
Their work put down roots. It gave shelter to families during difficult times. It helped make home-based hospice and nursing care feel possible for people who once may not have known such support existed.
Like an acorn growing from an oak, the lessons they passed on continued through others.
Hopps carried those lessons into her own caregiving. Arbor Hospice and NorthStar Care Community continue to share the importance of compassionate support at home. Families across the region continue to benefit from the kind of care Jelneck and Deininger helped make real.
Their story carries forward in the quiet, steady work of caregivers today, in the families who feel less alone and in the compassion passed from one generation to the next.
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