Caroline Hartrampf

News Obituary Article

SANDY SPRINGS: Caroline Hartrampf, 'had a passion for God'

By RICK BADIE

Caroline Hartrampf paid a surprise visit to her father on Wednesday. She was traveling from Tuscaloosa, where she attended the University of Alabama, to Greenville, S.C., for a wedding.

Father and daughter dined together.

"Just the two of us," Jack Hartrampf of Sandy Springs said. "She wanted to talk about her life, to talk to me about changing her major. She loved children and she loved winning souls to Christ, so it didn't surprise me at all. She was a nurturer, an encourager."

This summer, Ms. Hartrampf spent nearly two months at Camp Ozark, a Christian camp for youngsters in Mount Ida, Ark. She worked in the campground store and post office. A different group of children shuttled through weekly.

"She told me that she hated to see them leave," said her mother, Sharon Hartrampf, "and that she wanted to be a counselor there next year. I was just thinking how many lives she has touched just from that camp, from the children who went there from all the different states."

Caroline Elizabeth Hartrampf, 19, of Sandy Springs died Friday in a car accident in Fountain, S.C. The funeral will be 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at Fellowship Bible Church in Roswell. Sandy Springs Chapel Funeral Directors is in charge of arrangements.

Ms. Hartrampf was a sophomore business major at the University of Alabama. She enjoyed wakeboarding, tennis, camping --- anything outdoors.

She was heavily involved in activities through the churches she attended --- Calvary Baptist in Tuscaloosa and Church of the Highlands on the Alabama campus. She served on a team that led Bible study for freshman girls.

Ms. Hartrampf and her father didn't identify potential majors she might pursue when they chatted last week. But more than likely it would have been a field to serve others.

Before she continued on to Greenville on Thursday, Ms. Hartrampf asked her mother --- who didn't attend college --- what major she would have pursued if given the chance.

"I told her something in nutrition or health exercise, and she lighted up," her mother said. "She said she was interested in that, too. She was in business because she thought that was what her grandfather wanted. But she had a passion for God and wanted to live for God."

Ms. Hartrampf died in the wreck near Greenville that also killed her boyfriend, Stephen Phillips, 20, of Charleston, S.C. Ms. Hartrampf, Mr. Phillips and a third friend had just left a rehearsal dinner when the truck driven by Mr. Phillips wrecked on a country road, her parents said.

Additional survivors include two sisters, Leigh Anne Hartrampf and Claire Hartrampf; a brother, John Hartrampf III; and grandparents, Si and Carole Wages and John and Karen Hartrampf, all of Sandy Springs.

© 2008 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution