Nanette Merlino Hotchner, born May 23, 1943, passed away peacefully on July 27, 2021. Nanette is predeceased by her parents, Joseph and Rose Merlino. She is survived by husband of 54 years, John, children Rick (Barbara) Hotchner, Jay (Crystl) Hotchner, Rose (Marc) Dando, and James (Kim) Hotchner, sister, Lorraine (Frank) DiBisceglie, and 12 grandchildren.
If a single word could be used to describe Nanette, it would be "giving": In her choice of career as an inner-city school teacher in Rochester, NY in the early 1960s, as a Registered Nurse in the D.C area in the late 1970s until retirement in 2014, as a wife, mother, grandmother and friend, and as a devoted member of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church.
She put herself though college at the State University of New York at Brockport prior to starting her teaching career. But after the birth and serious illness of her last child in 1973, she made up her mind that motherhood included understanding modern medicine and went back to school at Marymount University in Arlington, VA to earn her nursing degree - while being an involved mother of four young children. Nothing was impossible for Nanette, and that ethic and the value of hard work are what she and her husband worked to instill as principles in their children.
Her career as a nurse included working on a medical-surgical floor at George Washington University Hospital, then as Director of Patient Advocacy at Northern Virginia Doctors Hospital (where she also served for several years on the Hospital's Board of Directors). She then worked at the U.S. State Department's Office of Medical Services designing a Quality Control program for medical staff attached to US diplomatic and consular posts worldwide. Finally she spent the last part of her career as a staff nurse for the Physicians Referral Service of the Georgetown University Hospital, which included managing transfers of gravely ill patients to Georgetown. In all these efforts, she put her whole heart into her work, and kept the needs of the patient in first place.
Her legacy of giving will live on in all those whose lives she touched.
Among her other interests were visiting family and friends, travel to see new places, Presidential Libraries and art museums.
In lieu of flowers the family requests that she be remembered by donations to Operation Smile, or to the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance.
A visitation will be held at Murphy Funeral Home Arlington on Sunday, August 1st from 7-9PM. A funeral service will be held at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church Monday, August 2nd at 1PM, followed by burial at National Memorial Park.
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