‘HOOSIERS WE’VE LOST’: Kidney transplant recipient loses battle with COVID-19

Wotnow

Editor’s note: This is one of a continuing online series of profiles of the more than 12,000 Hoosiers who have died from COVID-19. The stories are from 12 Indiana newspapers, including The Republic, who collaborated to create the collection to highlight the tremendous loss that the pandemic has created. The series appears daily at therepublic.com.

Name: Diana Kay Wotnow

City/Town: Fort Wayne

Age: 52

Died: June 14

A 30-year employee of City Utilities, Diana Kay Wotnow was a wife and the mother of two sons, including one who recently married.

The 1986 Northrop High School graduate loved music. She loved reading. She loved searching antique malls for vintage Fisher-Price toys, her family wrote in her obituary. And she loved playing with her dogs, Daisy and Dillon.

Wotnow was a kidney transplant recipient who battled the novel coronavirus for more than six weeks. And then, she lost the fight.

A co-worker, Mary Schmidt, called Wotnow’s death a “terrible loss for Fort Wayne; to her family.”

The obituary said she was survived by her husband of 32 years Michael Wotnow.

Diana Kay Wotnow was one of the first 2,500 Allen County residents to contract COVID-19.

“She was the bravest, strongest, most wonderful person I ever met.” Schmidt said in June. “Diana was a young woman. She was so much fun to be around. I can hear her laugh in my head right now.”

— Contributed by the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette