Joan Baker Hutchison, whose special gifts of empathy, sense of fun, and making things beautiful led her to become a nurse, an extraordinary mother, and an accomplished artist, died on Oct. 7 at her home in East Providence, Rhode Island. She was 88.
Joan Hutchison, 88, passed away on Oct. 7. There will be a celebration of her life in the spring.
Joan was a longtime resident of New Canaan with her husband, Bill, and their three children, but she lived all over the country.
She spent childhood summers in Whitefish, Montana, where her Norwegian-immigrant family was from and where she swam in the lake and played with the summer kids until the town curfew whistle blew in the evening.
In the coming years, her father’s job took the family across the Midwest and to the East Coast. She started college at Cornell University, but transferred to nursing school at Emory University.
It was during this time that she met Bill, a budding management consultant, when they went sailing together on blind dates — but not with each other. Joan and Bill would introduce their young family to cruising on Long Island Sound out of the Noroton Yacht Club and occasionally up to Martha’s Vineyard. They later enjoyed empty-nest cruising along the Maine Coast on their Concordia yawl, Otter.
Joan began her career as a registered nurse, but she took a 20-year break to raise her three children. Inspired by her love of books, music, and art, she launched a decades-long whirlwind of activities, sharing her passions with her children, inspiring passions of their own.
Known as “Nini” among her grandchildren and as “a legendary grandmother,” they revered her talents ranging from drawing, to teaching crafts in the playhouse she created, to baking Norwegian cookies and making the best grilled cheese sandwiches on the planet.
Joan fueled it all with her distinctively welcoming giggle and cheerful feistiness. She would smile at the occasional deer that nibbled the flowers in her garden and say, “You’re beautiful, but so dang destructive.”
Joan transformed the family’s 200-year-old colonial farmhouse by herself, including wallpapering, stenciling, reupholstering and varnishing. She was forever filling lonely corners with flourishing plants, many from her beloved garden, which she tended through every season.
Whether knitting, weaving, or quilting with her many close friends, she always had busy hands — even while attending her youngest daughter’s figure skating classes, watching “The Rockford Files” with the family, or traveling on road trips.
When her last child went away to school, she stepped back into her nursing career at the Waveny Care Center in New Canaan. She went on to work as an oncology nurse at the renowned Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and later at Greenwich Hospital.
Joan’s intuitive approach to the easing of suffering and connecting with patients made her beloved among staff and patients. This quality was especially important during the last years of Joan’s career, as a hospice nurse.
But it was her second career in middle age, as an artist and maker of striking botanical etchings, that brought her unexpected delight. She spent many hours at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, etching her delicate drawings of perhaps a single datura or peony or other flowering plant, some of which were exhibited at the New York Botanical Garden.
Two of her etchings were displayed in the lobby of the famed Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when the late, great Eartha Kitt was playing the Café Carlyle. Joan said, “I like the thought of my datura being in earshot while Eartha was singing.”
In the final years of her life, Joan lived valiantly with dementia. Her short-term memory faded, but not her love for Bill, who died in 2018, her family, her longtime friends, or her beloved dachshund, Mildred. She also kept her memories of music, art, the ocean, and so many other things of beauty.
She is survived by her children and their spouses: Susan Hutchison, Bill and Stephanie Hutchison, Katie Hutchison and Chris Hufstader; and her grandchildren: Brielle, Billy, and Summer.
There will be a celebration of Joan’s life in the spring, when the flowers are in bloom. Her favorite.
Donations in Joan’s memory may be made to the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Building 31, Room 5C27, 31 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892.
— an obituary (from Perry-McStay Funeral Home), published by the Darien Times on Legacy.com, where online condolences may be left