04/16/2026
What a wonderful story about our friend Agnes! If you know her, you love her. ❤️👏🏼
Before last week, I knew the name Agnes Binder Weisiger. If you live in Charlotte, you probably do too. It’s on buildings. Floors. Most notably, the new breast health center at Novant Health—a place that feels more like a spa than a medical facility and treats mammograms like something not to dread.
So, I knew Mrs. Binder Weisiger was generous.
I didn’t know the woman behind the name.
I wasn’t prepared for the detail-oriented visuals she paints with words, her spark, humor, or fascinating memory about a 42-year career as a nurse and her life as a 9th-generation Charlottean (yes, 9th) born at Presbyterian Hospital.
“I’m a mixed bag,” she said with a confident smile. “Back in the 1960’s, I wasn’t married and had opinions. Doctors didn’t know what to do with me. But, I managed it. I managed all of it.”
Agnes—she quickly corrected me from referring to her as “Mrs. Binder Weisiger”—is 85 years young. She’s sharp. Personable. Direct. Started nursing in 1963 in a career she chased.
Caregiving was in her bones.
“My dad died when I was 11,” she says. “At that point, my mom ‘overdid’ me. I took to running a house and writing checks like a duck takes to water. I learned to live independently and when my mom died in 1966 [Agnes was 25], I ran everything.”
When Agnes talks, it’s hard to turn away. She remembers years, locations and describes the characters in her stories like she had lunch with them last week.
She told me about co-workers, old boyfriends, and medical procedures before safeguards: about mixing chemotherapy with no gloves, traveling to Atlanta to learn about emerging ultrasound technology and how she was asked to train in the first class for family nurse practitioners in Chapel Hill in 1972. She then returned to Charlotte and had to sell the concept as the city’s first family nurse practitioner.
“Things were good,” she said. “But I’d get bored.”
Agnes says she always knew there was more to learn. Always more to see.
“I was lucky I could travel and didn’t mind traveling alone,” she says. “Then at 35, I moved to Aspen and ended up working at the hospital there as a registered nurse.”
When she returned to Charlotte, she worked with the same group she’d previously worked with, Travis Medical Clinic (which became First Charlotte Physicians, which became part of Novant Health) seeing patients in the office in the morning, and visiting nursing homes in the afternoon. During all of this, she also went to UNC Charlotte for night courses and got another degree.
Her life felt full. By 1981, she said she’d already been around the world twice, loved to ski, took scuba lessons, flying lessons (once piloted herself solo from Charlotte to Lancaster, SC!), and loved her career.
It was then she met Ed Weisiger. They hit it off. She says he didn’t want to stifle her independence. Ed and Agnes got married in 1983.
Agnes was 42 years old.
They’ve been married now 43 years.
“When you’re 40-something and dating, you care about different things,” she said. “You care what they do. You care how they think. You care if they like your friends and if you can have fun together.”
Agnes continued working as a nurse practitioner, always coming back to “helping others” and giving back to Converse College, UNC Charlotte, UNC Chapel Hill and Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing, places she attended herself.
Eventually Agnes retired.
Then, 2011.
“Life changed again,” she said. “I felt my own lump.”
A biopsy showed invasive cancer.
Doctors wanted to remove one breast; Agnes fought to remove both.
“I had chemo,” she said. “I had surgery. No radiation was needed but from that entire personal experience, I saw the need for more breast health in Charlotte.”
After healing, Agnes created a business plan for mammography mobile units. (There are now two of them.) From there, Agnes worked on Novant’s cancer center and in 2024, helped open The Agnes Binder Weisiger Breast Health Center at Novant Health on Lillington Avenue in Charlotte.
“The concept is simple,” she said. “Have great help. Be organized. Offer safe parking, beautiful art, soft music and cotton robes [not paper]. Women can walk in and be seen.”
She paused. Gave me a side-knowing look.
“I don’t have children to spend my money on… children are expensive. I LIKE to spend my money on medical procedures and equipment to help the community. In fact, Molly, do you want to know my next project?”
Of course.
“We’re opening a stem cell lab at the Weisiger Cancer Center in May of 2026. It’s exciting. I’m really interested in the future care and treatment of prostate cancer.”
And suddenly she’s scrolling through images on her phone of x-rays, while talking about new-age robotic equipment for the pulmonary division and computer systems to aid Novant. Already building, already thinking, already solving.
The lesson in this leisurely, educational lunch?
Long before I ever said the words aloud, Agnes was living them:
Bet On Yourself.
Agnes: You are joy. You are a gift. You are an example.
Thank you, Novant Health, for setting this table and introducing us. For knowing Agnes’s story is one worth sharing.
Two weeks out from Bet On Yourself Summit 3.0.
Get ready, friends. Much ahead.
-Molly
