Katharine (Kit) Eaton Dreier, 96, of Lincoln, a longtime Belmont resident whose volunteer work on land conservation protected open areas for future generations, died on Sept. 28.
Kit and her husband, psychiatrist Ted Dreier Jr., moved to Belmont from Cambridge in 1994 and remodeled a house on Howells Road. He worked at McLean Hospital, and she was elected to Town Meeting.
Kit was a founding member of the Belmont Land Trust. She led the organization’s work to establish the Lone Tree Hill conservation land and restore its Pine Allée, a 120-year-old walkway lined with towering white-pine trees. Kit served as a founding trustee of the Judy Record Conservation Fund, supporting Belmont conservation projects. She was active in the Thursday Club of Belmont, a women’s read-aloud book group founded in 1890.
Born in Cambridge, Kit grew up in Lincoln with two brothers and attended Shady Hill School and Concord Academy. She graduated from Smith College in 1952 with a bachelor’s in political science.
She returned to Shady Hill School to complete its apprentice-teaching program, then taught in England.
Kit’s first husband, Arthur Hinton Read, a Scottish mathematician, died in a mountaineering accident in 1961. She moved back to the Boston area from Scotland with her two children and taught school.
In 1965, she met Ted, a fellow cellist. They married and had two daughters, raising the four children in Cambridge. The couple built a rustic house on Martha’s Vineyard and spent more than 50 summers on the island. In 2018, Kit returned from Belmont to the town where she grew up, moving with Ted to The Commons in Lincoln. He died the next year at 89.
Kit sang in the retirement community’s chorus, grew vegetables, and painted watercolors into her 90s. She co-founded the Commons Green Initiative, focusing on climate change.
Kit is survived by her son, Richard Read and his wife, Brenda, of Seattle; two daughters, Katharine (Kate) Read Villars and her husband Thom, of Norwich, Vermont, and Ruth Antoinette Dreier, of Sebastopol, Calif.; a granddaughter, Nehalem Kunkle-Read, of Seattle; and a brother, Jefferson Taft Eaton, of Lincoln.
A memorial gathering will be held at a date to be determined. Donations may be made to the Belmont Land Trust or the Judy Record Conservation Fund.
Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord is handling arrangements. Please visit Dee’s site for a full life story and guest book.
