Hello to all. I am a retired teacher who attended Hackensack schools during the 1940s and 1950s. Subsequently my career led me out of state, and unfortunately I haven’t been back to NJ for nearly fifty years. The first school I went to was Longview Avenue elementary school, which at that time included kindergarten through sixth grade. I was there before, during, and after the name change from Longview to Fanny Meyer Hillers school.
Recently I had occasion to access the website of Hillers school, but when I checked out the Hillers History section of the site, I was astonished to find that there is barely any mention of Fanny Meyer Hillers herself. The only reference I saw was the briefest of statements saying that the school was renamed in 1950 after an educator who had 41 years of service with Hackensack public schools. There is no indication that Mrs. Hillers even taught at the same school that now bears her name. In my opinion, this is inadequate for a person who was once held in such high esteem that a school was named after her.
So, for anyone who may be interested, I will describe what I remember about Mrs. Hillers. She was a very special person who taught kindergarten while I was at Longview, and it was said that she had been teaching at this school for a long time. Thus, she was in a position to give positive direction to children during some of their most formative years. Although I met her at a very young age, I have distinct memories of her as a rather thin elderly woman with boundless energy, optimism, and enthusiasm for everything she did. She placed great emphasis on reading, and she once told me that if I practiced my reading each day I would learn more about the world. She didn’t forget her students either after they had completed kindergarten. First grade was just down the hall from her classroom, and she would sometimes stop children she knew to ask them how they liked being in first grade and what they were learning. She just never stopped caring about children.
I didn’t see as much of Mrs. Hillers after I entered second grade, as my classroom was located on a different floor, but I do remember one notable incident that occurred the following Spring. I had become sick with a respiratory illness that turned into pneumonia, which was a very serious disease in those days. I was home recuperating for nearly a month, and one day my Mom came to my room and told me I had a visitor. When I looked up I saw Mrs. Hillers smiling at me from my doorway. She had heard about my illness and had stopped by on her way home from school to see how I was doing. No one from my second grade class had come to see me, but apparently Mrs. Hillers still remembered me. She said she also brought me a couple of books to read from the school library when I felt up to it, but when I asked how many books she brought, she patiently explained to me that when she used the word “couple” it meant exactly two, and not “a few” as I had mistakenly assumed. I remember her saying that I should always check a dictionary if I was unsure about the meaning of a word, and I never forgot that lesson from her.
It was possibly only a year or so later that Mrs. Hillers herself became ill with cancer and eventually passed away. I was very sad when this happened, as Longview just didn’t seem like quite the same place without her. Later I remember my parents talking about a proposal to change the name of the school to Hillers school in her honor. I liked the proposal because I thought then that people would always remember her, but now that so many years have gone by, it seems to me that most people today don’t really know who the person was behind the name. If I may make a suggestion, I think it would be beneficial for someone at Hillers school to do a little research and compile a brief biography of this remarkable person and include it as part of the Hillers school website.