Dr. Bette Catoe Strudwick, known professionally as Dr. Catoe, was born in 1926. In 1944, she graduated from Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. and received a scholarship to Howard University.
Although most people told her she could be a nurse, it was a physics professor who convinced her she could be a doctor. In 1948, she was awarded a B.S. in chemistry and physics and another scholarship, this time to the Howard University College of Medicine. While studying to become a doctor, she became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Her medical school class of 75 had only seven women in it.
She married Warren Strudwick, Sr. when she was 23 and in medical school. In an interview, she said, “After I got married, they took away my scholarship because married women were not supposed to be in medical school. I persisted.”
The couple had three children, two boys and a girl. At first, her pediatrics office was in the basement of her home. She explained:
As a two-doctor family, we had to work on our schedules. When we were in medical school, my husband would come home and study, and I would come home to study and cook. I did what all other housewives did, and then did medicine. When we started working as doctors, we scheduled our work so that there would always be one parent with the children.
In the late 1950s, she and her husband, who was a surgeon, helped integrate DC area hospitals. She moved her office to a building she and other Black professionals owned in the Brightwood neighborhood.
In the mid 1960s she became a member of the Board of Trustees of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia, a position she held for more than three decades. She was involved in many community, civic, social and medical organizations. And over her lifetime she was honored by a number of those organizations.
She was honored with a drive-by celebration for her 95th birthday in 2021.
She retired from her practice in 2003. Her husband of 59 years passed away in 2008 when he was 84. She died on February 1, 2022 at the age of 95.
