Henrik A. Schutz

Henrik A. Schutz (Hank) died peacefully on February 16 from complications at the end of a lengthy battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Deeply loved as husband to Frances, brother to Trudi, father to Allen and Katy, and Opa to Eva, Darius, and Nate. They and many relatives in the US and Europe will miss his loving presence, his wit, his puns, his analytical thought processes, his storytelling, and his violin playing. His death also leaves a hole in the Charlottesville music community and the local and wider Quaker community, in which he participated for most of the 43 years he lived here. He helped create or deepen the sense of teamwork and community everywhere he lived. Those teams will miss him sorely.

Hank was a first-generation American, born in Newtonville, MA, to Harald and Adele Schutz, refugees from Vienna, Austria. His older sister Trudi was born in Hanover, NH, in 1943. The family moved to the Baltimore, MD, area when Hank was 3, and that was ‘home’ to him until his marriage in 1967.

His academic training included a B.S. in Engineering & Applied Science from Yale University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University with a thesis in computational linguistics. He worked for GM in Michigan and locally for GE/GE-FANUC and National Optronics.

Music was a lifelong passion and pursuit. His musical teams in the Charlottesville area comprise nearly a dozen groups, from “gigging” trios and quartets to classical chamber music ensembles and many pit orchestras. The most regular of these were the Piedmont Chamber Players [about 30 years] and the Blue Ridge Chamber Orchestra [from its inception in 1987 until he retired at the end of 2023], where he served as concertmaster for about 30 of those years.

Hank was a lifelong Quaker, beginning in Baltimore. He and Frances met at a Quaker camp as teenagers, married under the care of Nottingham PA Friends Meeting, and were active in each Friends Meeting where they lived – in Bethlehem, PA, Birmingham, MI, and Charlottesville. Locally, he served on nearly every committee in the Meeting and as presiding Clerk for the Meeting’s monthly business sessions. He was a member and then chair of the board of Tandem Friends School. He served on several committees of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting, the umbrella Quaker organization for Meetings ranging from State College, PA, to Floyd, VA. His vocal ministry in worship was cherished by those who heard it and was often aimed at the children. He had a scientist’s skepticism about a higher power and what that might be or mean. He also had the gift of knowing when we were taking ourselves too seriously and lightened matters with some form of mostly-gentle jest.

A private interment will be followed by a celebration of life at Tandem Friends School on April 19, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. This will be a hybrid of in-person and Zoom meetings for worship (a Quaker memorial service). This will allow those unable to attend in person to participate with us virtually. In lieu of flowers, please consider giving to your local school, the Charlottesville Friends Meeting, the Baltimore Yearly Meeting Camping Program or Baltimore Yearly Meeting Camping Property Committee, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, or another progressive charity of your choice."

Arrangements are entrusted to Batten Funeral Home of Ruckersville, Virginia. 

An online guestbook is available at www.battenfuneral.com for those wishing to share memories or offer condolences. Your kind words will bring comfort and strength to the family during this time.