Sr. Charlotte Van Dyke has ministered as an educator, nurse, administrator and lawyer. When she entered the novitiate, the congregation had not changed much in the preceding 100 years.
That wasn’t to be the case, however, throughout her 70 years of ministry. Not only has she adapted to the signs of the times but so have the Sisters of Providence.
She entered the community after two years of nursing school at Seattle University. Like so many other Sisters before her and since, Sr. Charlotte began by teaching. She taught fifth grade in Walla Walla, Washington, and English at Providence High School in Burbank, California.
Sr. Charlotte then took the time to complete her nursing studies at St. Vincent Medical in Portland, Oregon, and became a staff nurse at St. Joseph’s in Burbank. In 1969, she completed an MBA at George Washington University and went on to serve for twenty years in administrative positions in the Providence Health System. She served as chief executive officer of St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Yakima and St. Joseph in Aberdeen.
Then, it was time for law school.
Sr. Charlotte earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Puget Sound and promptly set up her practice in one of the poorer sections of downtown Seattle, Pioneer Square. Her clients where often the poorest residents who could only pay her with in-kind goods or services.
“Part of my motivation for becoming an attorney,” explains Sr. Charlotte, “is that I love people. Women are not often well represented in the profession or the courtroom, so I wanted to do something about that.
“I’ve always been intrigued by the law and its effects on people.”
After 10-years she ended her full-time practice of law but kept busy. She served on the Mother Joseph Province Leadership Team as a provincial councilor from 2005 until 2009. She also served on many volunteer boards including the Providence Mount St. Vincent Foundation, the Sister Churches Board of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, the Refugee Women’s Alliance, the Jesuit Province Review board in Portland, and the Providence Housing Board.
She also volunteered with St. Vincent de Paul for home visits, tutored at Guadalupe Parish School, brought the Eucharist to residents of the Bridge Park Retirement Center, and helped with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.
What Sister Charlotte remembers most about the last 70 years are the people, ranging from the fourth grader moved to tears by her letter acknowledging his gift of a muffin, to the badly burned man whose bedside in isolation was where she spent most of one summer as a student nurse.
For the past few years, Sr. Charlotte has lived at St. Joseph Residence in West Seattle.