Andrew Nathaniel Ernst

Andrew “Andy” Nathaniel Ernst was born on August 9, 1941, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the youngest of three children of George Nathaniel and Elizabeth Southard Ernst. As a boy, he spent happy summers at The Junipers, his mother’s family’s longtime summer home on Westport Point, Massachusetts. Andy fondly remembered wagon rides down to the water and walks along the property’s waterfront as a young boy, and in later years, exploring nearby Horseneck Beach. In every home he lived in, he hung a photograph of the property’s old water tower. In the 1930s, his parents bought land on Lake Onota, and after the war they built a log cottage there as the family’s summer home. Andy spent his boyhood summers rowing, canoeing, and water-skiing behind the family’s Chris-Craft, and it was there that his lifelong love of the water took hold. Throughout his life, he returned with his own family to the Berkshires and Cape Cod.

Andy graduated from Monson Academy in Massachusetts, where he played on the JV football team. In 1963, he earned a Bachelor of Arts from Union College in Schenectady, New York, where he was active in the Delta Chi fraternity.

After college, Andy became a claims representative with Hartford Life Insurance Company. He was sharing a house with friends in East Haven, Connecticut, on Long Island Sound, when they met two young women in white uniforms who lived down the street. One of them was Nancy Dillingham, a research dietitian at Yale-New Haven Medical Center. Andy and Nancy married in June 1966 in Weaverville, North Carolina, and settled in Bethesda, Maryland. Nancy continued her nutrition career at the National Institutes of Health, and Andy worked as a customer service representative for Farrington Manufacturing Company, one of the first makers of bank card imprinting machines. In 1973, a former manager brought him to the American Bankers Association to lead its recently created bank card division. He later led the association’s banking standards and operations work until he retired in 1999. In Bethesda, Andy and Nancy raised two sons, James and David, and made many lifelong friends.

In 2001, Andy and Nancy began a new chapter in Virginia’s Northern Neck. They lived first in Irvington, near the Tides Inn, while building a home on Carters Creek, just off the Rappahannock River and about 20 minutes by boat from the Chesapeake Bay. Soon after they arrived, his friend and neighbor, the late Brig. Gen. James “Jim” Wroth, recruited him into U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 33. Andy quickly qualified as a coxswain and enthusiastically joined daily patrols, maintaining waterways, teaching boating safety, and participating in search-and-rescue missions, training, and competitions. It was a perfect fit for a man who had always loved being on or near the water. After living with dementia for several years, Andy died peacefully in his sleep on October 30, 2026, in Chandler, Arizona, with family nearby. He was 85.

Andy is survived by his wife of 60 years, Dr. Nancy Ernst; his sons, Dr. James Ernst and David Ernst; David’s wife, Lisa Schmitt Ernst; his granddaughters, Alexis and Kathryn Ernst; his brother-in-law, Marty Dillingham; and many beloved nieces and nephews of the Ernst and Dillingham families. He was predeceased by his brother, Willard “Bill” Royce Ernst, and his sister, Marian Ernst DuFresne.

The family especially thanks the memory care staff of the Revere community at Cadence Chandler for years of respectful and compassionate care and is deeply grateful to Always Present Hospice for end of life care. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations in Andy’s memory to the Alzheimer’s Association or Always Present Hospice.