Grant Hugh Kitchen was the kind of man who made steadiness look effortless. Calm, capable, always practical, and almost impossible to rattle. He was an engineer, outdoorsman, husband, father, grandfather, and quiet problem-solver who never raised his voice and almost never met a broken thing he could not fix.

Grant was born March 20, 1937, on the kitchen table of his family's farmhouse in Gladwin, Michigan. It was a fitting beginning in a state where farm ingenuity and industrial ambition lived side by side, and where the automobile was reshaping daily life. Both worlds would leave their mark on him: the self-reliance of the farm and the precise, inventive discipline of mechanical engineering.

One of six children, Grant grew up working and wandering the family farm. He rode the family's enormous plow horse bareback, walked to and from school with his siblings, and learned early that chores were simply part of belonging to a household. When the family moved to Pontiac, he attended Pontiac Senior High School and kept a paper route for spending money. He also emerged as the sibling who coordinated family matters when difficulties arose, showing an instinct for responsibility well before adulthood required it.

After graduating high school in 1955, Grant attended General Motors Institute, now Kettering University, through a cooperative program that alternated classroom study with a full time role in your desired career path. His employment with General Motors began while he was still a student and continued after his graduation in 1959, where he became a mechanical engineer specializing in transmission design. The work suited him: it demanded patience, exactness, and the ability to understand how many small parts could be made to move together reliably.

GM also brought Joyce into his life. She was working in the company's temporary secretarial pool while off for the summer from her elementary teaching responsibilities. After dating for only a few months, they married on November 23, 1966, followed by a honeymoon in the Canary Islands, made possible through the generosity of Grant's boss. Back in Michigan, they lived with Joyce's mother for a year and saved until they could purchase a home in Waterford, paid with cash, where they would live from 1967 through their entire marriage.

Their daughter, Anne, was born in 1972, and Joyce's mother Lela Rose helped care for her while Joyce taught and Grant worked. The household ran on schedules and clear plans, with Joyce as the outgoing organizer and Grant as the easygoing balance. He gave Anne an adventurous, hands-on childhood, teaching her to fish, shoot a bow and handle a gun "better than the boys". They traveled together on some of his work trips to Arizona, and escaped Michigan winters in Florida, where you would find Anne and Grant on the beach, at the pool, or off to an adventure park to ride roller coasters (to assess how they were engineered).

During these years, Grant's career continued to grow. Before computer-aided design became standard, he personally road-tested new transmission designs, driving from the Pontiac plant to Pikes Peak for altitude testing, then to Scottsdale for desert heat, and finally back to Michigan. The trips could last a full week and sometimes became family journeys, as well. By the time Anne was old enough to drive, her first car was a Sunbird that her father had helped develop.

Near the end of his career, Grant worked on the Corvette, though its flash and impracticality held little appeal for him. When Anne encouraged him to buy one at retirement, Grant said he would never drive it, instead keeping his van that he could load up with hunting or fishing equipment and drive North. After 44 years and nine months at GM, he accepted an early pension buyout, retiring just three months short of an even 45 years.

Through the working and parenting years, and long after retirement, Grant found his greatest pleasure outdoors. Hunting came first, followed by fishing and golfing. He hunted deer and turkey throughout his life, using both bow and rifle. Hunting tied him to his father, cousin John, brothers, and the Gladwin land of his childhood; family cabins and lodges kept the tradition alive for decades. Golf was the only sport on TV over the weekend, Jack Nicklaus was his favorite player, and father / daughter spent years attending the Buick Open and were lucky enough to attend the US Open and Ryders Cup, as well. Grant also enjoyed golfing with Anne's husband Brian, and playing Arcadia Bluffs was a special treat.

At home, Grant's engineering mind never truly switched off. He was the person who fixed what broke, and Anne could not recall the family ever needing to call an outside repairman. He was equally exacting about the yard, refusing to buy a riding mower and insisting on pushing one for the exercise even as he grew older. His self-taught woodworking combined his precision with a quieter kind of creativity. He could sketch a design freehand and build almost anything requested, yet he repeatedly turned down offers of payment because he preferred the work as a craft rather than a business.

As Anne built a life of her own and moved first to Grand Rapids and later to Kalamazoo, Grant and Joyce visited often. Summers drew them to Frankfort and eventually to a cottage on Herring Lake, while winters took them to Florida. Their granddaughters, Claire and Darby, became the recipients of some of Grant's most personal work. For each girl, he built a custom wood-and-plexiglass case with a hinged lid to display their riding ribbons—careful, useful pieces crafted especially for them and still kept in their rooms today.

When Joyce faced cancer for the third time after two earlier battles with breast cancer, Grant became her primary caregiver. Advanced illness presented a problem that could not be solved with tools, measurements, or mechanical skill, but he met it with the same steadiness that had guided the rest of his life. He cared for Joyce faithfully until her death in 2012.

Grant then continued living independently in the Waterford home they had worked so hard to purchase. Not long after losing Joyce at age 72, he joined Anne's family at Disney World and walked the parks for 14 hours in a single day alongside everyone else. Anne later helped move him closer to her family in Kalamazoo, where he settled into independent living and still insisted on doing everything he could for himself. Even when he faced health challenges in his last few years of life, he remained remarkably composed and reluctant to acknowledge his own discomfort.

Sadly, Grant fell ill with sepsis and after battling it mightily for several weeks, he died on August 13, 2026 at the age of 89. In Claire and Darby's rooms, the ribbon cases he built still rest where they belong, their careful joints and hinged lids holding years of effort and pride. They are much like the life Grant constructed around the people he loved: sturdy, useful, unshowy, and made to hold what mattered.

Grant was preceded by his wife, Joyce Kitchen and by his siblings, Joanne Crossman, Frank Kitchen, and Melvin Kitchen. Grant is survived by his daughter, Anne (Brian) Mullally; granddaughters Claire and Darby Mullally and siblings Marlene (Bob) Furman and Glenn (Sam) Kitchen.

Please join us to honor and celebrate a truly one-of-a-kind man at a visitation on Monday, August 17, 2026, at COATS FUNERAL HOME-WATERFORD (3141 Sashabaw Road, Waterford) from 11am – 1pm. Burial will follow at Perry Mount Park Cemetery, Pontiac. Celebrate Grant's life online by sharing your favorite stories and photos on his dedicated webpage at BetzlerLifeStory.com. Memorial contributions may be made to Defenders of Wildlife or the charity of your choice.