Sister Colleen Waterman papers

Colleen Waterman, a religious sister and registered nurse, was born in Rockwell City, Iowa, to Evelyn and Richard Moore in 1934.  In 1936, Colleen’s father was killed in an accident. Later, her mother remarried William Waterman and Colleen adopted his last name. Colleen attended St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Elementary School and Rockwell City Public High School, in which she graduated as valedictorian of her class in 1952.  After high school, Colleen attended St. Mary’s School of Nursing in Rochester, Minnesota, and the College of St. Teresa in Winona, Minnesota. She received a nursing degree from Marquette University in Wisconsin. After graduating from nurse's training in 1955, Colleen entered the Sisters of St. Francis of Rochester, Minnesota, the following year.  She took her temporary vows in 1958 and her perpetual vows in 1961. She then requested to go into public health nursing, and her superiors sent her to Charleston, South Carolina, to work with Sister Maigread Conway at Echo House in Union Heights. In the summer of 1965, Sister Maigread Conway was featured in The Catholic Extension Magazine for her success with Project Cabrini, a free-form summer school program available to children living in the Cabrini-Green segregated housing development in Chicago, Illinois. After viewing the article, the bishop of Charleston, Ernest Unterkoefler, arranged for Sister Maigread to come to Charleston to launch the Summer Achievement in Learning (SAIL) program.  Monsignor Thomas Duffy, director of the Diocese of Charleston Catholic Charities, sponsored the project.  After Sister Colleen’s first summer of SAIL, she stayed to work permanently in poverty ministry. Neighborhood House, located at 77 America Street in Charleston, was established in 1915 as a social service center by the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy and St. Francis Hospital. In the 1960s, Catholic Charities assumed the sponsorship of this work, and a soup kitchen was started under Monsignor Duffy. The Franciscan Sisters of Minnesota ministered to the local community. Sister Colleen’s ministry has included a soup kitchen, senior citizen outreach, literacy tutoring, adult education, sewing classes for mothers, a clothing center, AIDS ministry, and prison ministry. She marched for fair wages, against abortion and capital punishment, advocated for the homeless, and was a Low Country AIDS volunteer. In 2007 Sister Colleen received the papal honor of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Cross for her service to the poor.  She celebrated her golden jubilee in 2008. In 2010, after forty-two years of service in Charleston, Sister Colleen returned to her mother house in Rochester, Minnesota.

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