“I’ve got Navy in my blood.” Joan Hortin’s life is a story of not just one navy but two. The granddaughter and daughter of U.S. Naval officers, Joan was determined not to get swept up in the life of a Navy wife. However, when a dashing British Royal Navy officer captured her heart, fate had other plans. Now an 89-year-old resident at Morning Pointe of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Assisted Living, she has a story to share that spans several oceans and four continents!
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Pearl Harbor and World War II
Joan was born in Coronado, California, on Sept. 7, 1935. At age 6, she moved with her parents to Hawaii. Her father was stationed as a lieutenant with a squadron there. Upon arrival, she was greeted with traditional leis by Hawaiian girls, and she still remembers the smell of the flowers.
The women were set up in a family apartment while Joan’s father was on duty. “I used to get the coconuts and drink the milk and eat the meat,” Joan said. She also got to see the famous Hawaiian Hilo Hattie dance the hula. This peaceful life in the islands was not to last long, however. Just six months after Joan and her mother arrived, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
“It was a Sunday morning, and we were sitting in the front window eating waffles,” Joan remembered. “A man came running across the compound, and he was waving his arms and yelling something. When he got closer, I heard him say, ‘We’ve been bombed. Get back to your cabins immediately, and get your radios and hide under your beds.’” No one knew if there might be a second bombing run.
A few months later, the American civilians on the compound were evacuated. Joan and the others were weighed and boarded a plane, which had the seats removed to accommodate more people. They sat on blankets on the floor all the way to San Francisco. From there, Joan and her mom went back to Coronado.
“It was 21 months before I saw my father again, and we did not know where he was,” Joan remembered. She and her mother received letters from him during the war, reassuring them that he was alive and well, but censored to remove any indicators of where he was serving… until a clue slipped through that referenced a kangaroo. “We knew he must be in Australia.”
In 1943, her father returned to the continent, but when he showed up at their house, he was greeted by a sign saying to join the family at the hospital – Joan had needed an emergency appendectomy. She was so happy to see her father again, and he shared with them where he had been and what he had been doing: flying night bombing raids across the South Pacific.
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A World of Education and Recruitment by the NSA
Joan was an only child until she was a teenager, and she and her parents were very close. This was a good thing as the family lived a typical military traveling life over her childhood. From Coronado, the family moved to Annapolis, and from there, all the way to Santiago, Chile, where they stayed for two and a half years. Joan became fluent in Spanish and had the opportunity to travel throughout the South American country.
After that assignment, the family moved back to California for a few years, then across the U.S. to Jacksonville, Florida. She came of age there and remembers dressing up in a formal gown at age 15 to join the dances with the midshipmen. She also got her first job, overseeing the officers club swimming pool. “I loved the responsibility,” she said.
For high school, Joan went to Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, a private school that has educated such women as Susan Ford Bales, daughter of Former President Gerald Ford; former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; and actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Joan remembers Al Gore’s older sister, Nancy, being on her hall when she was there. When she was in 11th grade, however, her parents moved back to California again, and she didn’t want to go with them. They made a deal with her: if she came with them to Palo Alto, they would let her choose where to go to college.
Joan applied to Stanford University, William and Mary College, and Duke University, and was accepted by all three. However, after a tour of Duke, she fell in love with the college. “I just loved college life,” she said. She majored in Spanish and applied herself diligently, graduating on June 3, 1957.
During Careers Week, Joan indicated her interest in working for the government, and with her skills in languages and high level of intelligence, she was given opportunities with the National Security Administration (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)! She chose the NSA and was scheduled to report for duty as a crypto-communications trainee that October.
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Malta
That summer, Joan’s parents were stationed on the island of Malta, and as Joan had nothing to do before her job started, they invited her to join them. She flew to Malta with no inkling of how her life would change.
Joan’s mother accepted an invitation on her behalf to the birthday party of a vice-admiral’s daughter. Joan really didn’t want to go and only attended after making a deal with her mom that she would stay through dinner and then politely exit. At the party, Joan was not very impressed with the other young ladies. The gentlemen, however, were another story.
“I saw a young naval officer walking toward the row of girls, and I said to myself, ‘Somebody’s going to get lucky. He’s very handsome,’ Joan recalled with a twinkle in her eye. “He came straight up to me and bowed, and he said, ‘Would you like to dance?’ And instead of saying what a British girl would have said, which is, ‘That would be delightful, thank you,’ I said, ‘Sure,’ because I was straight from America,” she laughed.
The young officer took Joan out on the dance floor and told her his name, but between his accent and not enunciating very well, Joan couldn’t figure out what he said. After the party, he called for a taxi and escorted her back home, where her mother was watching for her.
The young officer, whose name was Brian Hortin, got her number and called the next day. They started dating, and by the end of the summer, they were engaged.
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England and Married Life
The plan was to marry a year later, but in May 1958, Joan’s father was reassigned to California, so they moved up the date. They had three days to plan a wedding! Joan credits her mother for pulling the event off, and the Hortins were wed on June 3, one year to the day from Joan’s college graduation. They jaunted over to Sicily for their honeymoon.
Joan spent her first summer as a married woman with Brian’s parents in Liverpool, England, while Brian was on tour. When he returned in September, they settled into their own place together. Joan was delighted. She had always loved reading and especially loved British authors. “It was a childhood wish that came true,” she said.
As a teenager, Joan’s family had prodded her toward U.S. Naval officers to date, but she had refused, because she knew from personal experience that U.S. Naval families moved about every two years. The British Navy, however, didn’t move so often. “I could put down roots for the first time,” Joan said with a smile.
The Hortins had a nice house in Weymouth, Dorset, for 13 years. Joan raised their three children there: Jennifer, Stephen, and Amanda. “I never wanted to leave,” she said.
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Back to the States, Retirement, and Morning Pointe
Eventually, Brian had to choose a new assignment, and he was able to consult his wife on the proffered locations. Bangladesh? Not hardly. Cairo? Nope. Washington, D.C.? The third offer was a winner, and soon the family were headed to the British Embassy.
“The children had not been introduced to America, and they liked it very much,” Joan said. While the children were in school, Joan took a part-time job as a secretary at The Potomac School in Maclean, Virginia, which was a boys’ school at the time. She was a secretary and remembers letting a young Christopher Kennedy (Robert F. Kennedy’s son) borrow $5 for a field trip. He paid her back quickly.
After three years at the embassy, Brian discharged from the British Navy. There was a question of which country the family should live in, and while Joan wanted to go back to England, the rest of her family outvoted her. Ever the bargainer, she made the case for one more year in the UK to say a proper goodbye to Brian’s family before the Hortins moved to the United States permanently.
The family built a house in Florida and lived in the state for 25 years. As they got older, they and moved to Chattanooga in 2007 to be near their daughter Amanda. Brian built a house, and they lived there for several years, until he started needing more assistance than Joan could handle on her own. They looked for an assisted living community, and he moved in to Morning Pointe of Chattanooga.
“He was so happy here,” Joan said. “He appreciated the staff, and he liked the food. Not long before he passed away, he said, ‘Thank you for finding such a nice place.’” Brian passed away in January 2023.
When Joan had a bad fall and knew her time for assisted living had come, she did her diligence in looking around at communities, but, she said, “It doesn’t get any better than this. This one had the wow factor.” When she moved in, six associates came up to her and gave her hugs, welcoming her back like a member of their family.
“I like the atmosphere,” Joan said. “This is not a nursing home. I like that they leave you to do your own thing as much as you’re capable of, but if they see you need help, they’re there for you immediately. They keep an eye on you from the medical side. There’s freedom, but you’re watched over. We all care about each other here.”
Joan stays busy, too. She is the vice president of the Resident Council, and she is in charge of the library. For meals, she has a lively dining room table of ladies who have become good friends. She plays bingo and organizes the peanut auction items. She goes on outings.
“There’s plenty of things to do,” she said. “We laugh a lot.”
As she recounted a life full of adventures, Joan shared: “I am most proud of my ability to adapt to a new situation.”
The waves of her life have carried her all over the world, and she has found her harbor here at Morning Pointe. We are glad to be part of her journey.
