A pioneering Black doctor retires after 40 years in Tacoma. He was one of the city’s first
Roughly 40 years ago, Charles Weatherby came back to Tacoma.
It was 1981, and Weatherby — a military kid who graduated from Lincoln High School and later attended the University of Washington School of Medicine — had spent the previous three years in Milwaukee, completing a residency 2,000 miles from home.
Weatherby was a doctor now and began his career in family medicine at a clinic in the Salishan neighborhood, not far from where he’d grown up on the Eastside.
Even decades after the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, he was one of the few Black doctors in Tacoma’s history, following in the footsteps of the well-known Dr. Daniel Thomas, recalled Willie Stewart. Stewart came to know Weatherby years earlier when the civic leader and barrier-breaking Black educator was an assistant principal at Lincoln.
“I think he felt a need for this community. He grew up in this community,” Stewart said of Weatherby’s decision to return.
On Thursday, Weatherby, 70, retired — walking out of his family practice office on South 19th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd one last time.
It was the culmination of a career spent caring for the community he grew up in, while serving as a trailblazer and inspiration for those who followed.
“It’s important to me that I made a difference in someone’s life,” Weatherby told The News Tribune this week, reflecting on his motivation over the last 41 years.
It’s not every day that I write a column about a doctor’s retirement, but then again, Weatherby hasn’t had an everyday life in Tacoma. A three-sport athlete at Lincoln, he opened his own family medicine practice in 1983, and, a decade later, helped establish Primary Care Northwest on Hilltop. His contributions outside the clinic came in all sizes: In 2000, Weatherby served as president of the Pierce County Medical Society. He was also a team doctor at Lincoln for roughly a decade, and for years served as the doctor-on-call at state high school basketball and football playoff games.
Weatherby’s wife, Shauna Rae, is a longtime nurse practitioner and former public health official who championed numerous HIV/AIDS prevention and minority health programs earlier in her career. She has been by his side the whole time. Together, the couple raised three successful children. Next week, Shauna Rae Weatherby is set to retire as well. Through their work in church or separately on advocacy issues that resonated with them, Weatherby said he and his wife “fought the battles together.”
According to Stewart, the impact Weatherby has had on Tacoma goes far beyond simply medicine and community service.
It’s a bold statement, considering Weatherby helped to diagnose his former assistant principal with prostate cancer roughly 30 years ago. (The early diagnosis, Stewart said, probably saved his life.)
Weatherby’s legacy in Tacoma is the example he set for others, Stewart said, and particularly children. He described a Black kid from Lincoln growing up to be a well-respected doctor as a “milestone achievement.”
“There was a perception of all the students — independent of color — who came out of Lincoln High School as railsplitters and blue collar workers,” Stewart said. “There was no perception of any kid from the Eastside (becoming a doctor), but certainly for an African American male, you couldn’t get any better than that.”
Elwis Johnson, a 38-year-old financial planner who grew up on Hilltop and still lives in Tacoma, has known Weatherby since the very beginning.
Johnson was delivered by Weatherby, he said, and spent years as his patient, as a child and into adulthood.
Like Stewart, Johnson said having a Black doctor in Tacoma to turn to was important. Growing up, his father knew Weatherby — everyone seemed to, he said — and as a medical professional with shared life experiences he built comfort and connections with patients in ways that white doctors simply could not.
“He pulled me into the world, and … he was just a guy who was always there for you,” Johnson said. “Representation matters, a ridiculous amount. If all you see is white doctors, you don’t know it’s something that’s possible.”
On the eve of his retirement, Weatherby said that’s one thing that still bugs him about his career in medicine. When he left the UW, he was one of six Black graduates in his class of 135 students.
According to a recent analysis of Census Bureau data, in 2018 only 5.4% of physicians practicing in the United States were Black, while Black people made up roughly 13% of the country’s population.
“I’m surprised,” Weatherby said of the lack of racial progress over the last 40 years. “I don’t see a lot of changes, unfortunately.”
It was just one of the many thoughts on Weatherby’s mind as he spent his final days in the office this week.
On his lunch break at the clinic, Weatherby said he had “very mixed feelings” about retirement.
It’s difficult to leave behind his patients and their families — some he’s been seeing “for generations,” he said — but mostly Weatherby was humbled by the outpouring of support he’s received.
“There was a need for me to be here,” Weatherby said of his impact on Tacoma, echoing Stewart’s sentiments.
“And I think that I made the right decision by doing that.”
