Jack Donald Horton

05/27/1945 - 07/10/2025

Jack passed breathless on July 10, 2025 with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. He was born in 1945 to the square dancers Jack and Ginny Horton. He was raised in Arlington, Virginia where as a youth he was an Eagle Scout and paperboy for the Washington Post. He was a National Merit Finalist at Wakefield High School (yay FRIP), Phi Beta Kappa at Johns Hopkins University, and Chapter President of Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He did his medical residency at Penn and Cardiology Fellowship at Georgetown University under the incomparable Proctor Harvey. He stayed on full-time at Georgetown, publishing papers on Echocardiography. He next transitioned to clinical faculty, becoming a partner at Northern Virginia Cardiology Associates, practicing primarily at Fairfax and Arlington hospitals. He was elected a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the Council of Clinical Cardiology. He retired at 67 years old to care for his wife who died at 65 years old of Early-Onset Alzheimer's. He met his wife Anne Ward while waltzing at the Austrian Embassy. Until the onset of Anne's Alzheimer's ten years later, these were the happiest years of his life.
Jack D ran track and played in the band in high school and college. He loved playing and listening to the trumpet and he was the bugler for his and his son's Boy Scout Troops, also playing Taps at several local cemeteries. He was an avid dancer, sailor, skier, reader, debater, bridge player, teacher, tennis player, opera buff, and theatre goer. He was a caregiver in many capacities, caring for his patients, neighbors, and his wife and son. His was an exemplary, well-lived life and he will be missed. Perhaps someone might bugle Taps for him.
He is survived by his son, Jack E Horton, a Duke-trained engineer currently living in Arlington, and his sister, Carol Horton, a teacher/coach living in Springfield, Virginia. His son helped enormously with his mother's care and was the primary caregiver for his father.
A service and a visitation will take place on Saturday, August 23, 2025 at First Presbyterian Church, 601 N Vermont St, Arlington, VA 22203, at 11 a.m.