“Among the BKW school community Mrs. Hitter will be remembered most for two qualities - her intense passion for literature and for being a strong advocate of children’s literacy. She believed in the importance of instilling a love of reading in children, particularly preschoolers.” BKW TrailBlazer Sept. 2001
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She strongly advocated the teaching of nursery rhymes to children from a very young age as one of the best ways to prepare them to read. Mrs. Hitter also thought that reading children fairy tales is the best way to feed and inspire children’s imagination as well as instill them with the basics of our culture. Donations which have been made to the elementary library in her name will be used to start an early literacy program based on these beliefs.
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She will also be remembered for the common sense way she brought the new Information Science and technology to the district. During her tenure she updated the old card catalog system to a computer based system and taught faculty and students alike how to use the Internet and how to decide what Internet information to trust.
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All of her library program efforts were accomplished while also fulfilling her teaching duties of one lesson every six days for every elementary class in the district.
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According to Steve Schrade, district superintendent, “Eileen was a talented library media specialist ... Always willing to do extra things.” Retired principal Reed Schultz said that she made the library “a great place to go, a warm place.”
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Eileen was born in Brooklyn on April 22, 1954. Like so many other families Eileen, her parents, Joan and Ed, her brother, Ed and her two sisters, Dot and Joan moved to the suburban town of Bay Shore on Long Island in 1962. She met Tom in
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