Young Ei Shin Hobbie, February 6. 1946 – October 5, 2024 died peacefully at home after a year-long courageous battle with liver cancer. She was 78 and had lived in Falls Church City for fifty years. Her life demonstrated her extraordinary talents, determination, professionalism as an occupational health nurse, and love of family, nature, travel, dancing, and adventure. Born in the village of Apo, in North Gyeongsang Province, Republic of Korea as one of six children, she attended the Dong San Hospital nursing college—now the Keimyung University College of Nursing, in Daegu, Korea—after being separated from her family during the Korean War and many years thereafter. While a nursing student she was supported by the loving missionary family of John and Jean Sibley and her close friends Jae Chul Han and Hwa Wook Choi, through whom she first met her husband Chuck—a Peace Corps volunteer teacher. She became a nurse “pioneer” in 1971 after graduation, joining a Korean-West German initiative in which she went with other nurses to West Germany to serve in the St. Joseph’s Hospital and the St. Agnes’ Hospital in Hannover to earn German monetary support for Korea’s struggling economic development, then in an early stage. She and her future and surviving husband Chuck reunited in Hannover years later, married, and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in August of this year.
Mother of Jason Shin Hobbie and Amy Margaret Hobbie, Young with Chuck raised their family in Falls Church City, Virginia, where she was a member of Falls Church Presbyterian Church for four decades and beloved especially as a welcoming usher of quiet demeanor and a beautiful smile. She was deeply attached to and loved by her family, friends in the Falls Church community and the Northern Virginia/Maryland Korean community, and her neighbors in Falls Church, Little River, SC, and Wardensville, WV. Most of all Young adored her children and her grandchildren: Amy and Patrick Rabenold’s daughter Aoife Mae Hobbie (2017) and Jason and Callie Hawkins’ sons Coley James Hobbie, who died at birth (2018), and Fletcher Hayes Hobbie (2021).
In her initial years in Falls Church, while learning English and adjusting to her new American life, she passed her citizenship, nursing licensing, and occupational health nursing licensing examinations. Thereafter she worked with the Powhatan Nursing Home in Arlington, Virginia; American Red Cross, in Washington, DC; and World Bank in Washington, DC, before becoming a federal government nurse. In the latter position she worked first with the Postal Service in Merrifield, Virginia, and Washington, DC, and finally with the Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, where she earned the deep thanks of actor George Takei and many others, as well as special performance awards before retiring.
Young delighted in hiking in the mountains of New Hampshire and West Virginia and along the Carolina beaches. She possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of edible plants, mushrooms, trees, wildflowers, and ocean life—honed during years of struggling to survive as a child in war-torn Korea. She was an accomplished poet and published poems in The Korea Times and other Korean publications. She studied Korean ink-brush painting and filled her home with beautiful art. One of her pure joys pre-Covid was ballroom dancing, which she enjoyed for over ten years. She also delighted in travel, especially by cruise ships, and visited three dozen countries and four continents after retirement in addition to visiting periodically her family and friends in Korea. Some of her favorite travel memories were accompanying Jason and Amy and their spouses on a tour of her homeland and introducing them to her older brother, who predeceased her, and surviving older sister, younger brother, younger sister, nephews and nieces, and their children. She also shared Chuck’s love of Dartmouth College, as an honorary member of the class of 1967, became an avid bird-watcher—she had the sharp eyes of an eagle, and was beloved by the AFGE/AFL-CIO community and Peace Corps family worldwide.
Young will be buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Falls Church near Coley James’s grave and celebrated at a memorial service at the Falls Church Presbyterian Church on November 16, 2024, at 10:00 am. In lieu of flowers, contributions in Young’s name may be made to the Falls Church Presbyterian Church.
