Eileen Heckerling

1942 - 2025

Eileen Heckerling
August 15, 1942 - March 30, 2025
Eileen Signal Heckerling, a longtime Stamford resident, passed away peacefully on March 30, 2025, at the age of 82. She was surrounded by family for the final days of her amazing life.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Eileen attended Erasmus Hall High School before earning her degree from Brooklyn College- "the Harvard of the proletariat." She became a middle school English teacher and, in 1968, one evening at a party during the NYC teachers' strike, found herself in an argument with fellow educator, David Heckerling. She had been her school's union representative, he had been tapped to represent the administration. Their spirited debate outlasted the party and continued over coffee. Two weeks later, David proposed. They married and moved to Connecticut, eventually settling in Stamford to raise their two sons, Jeremy and Matthew.
While the boys were young, Eileen ventured into the corporate world, a foreign landscape for a former teacher. She took a part-time role at a local market research firm run by close family friends (then and now), then transitioned into a full-time research position at another Stamford-based firm, whose founders also became lifelong friends. Seeking to shore up her knowledge and credentials, she earned an MBA from the University of Connecticut's Stamford branch.
After graduate school, Eileen took a sales role at a Westchester-based information technology firm. She travelled extensively, selling corporate and industry research reports on microfiche, all words that would have meant nothing to her before applying for the position – except "selling," a word that would have stricken in her nausea and fear. But she overcame her fear and rose to the challenge. When the company was acquired, Eileen saw an opportunity to combine her experience in information technology with her passion for amplifying underserved voices.
Citing Auguste Comte's phrase, "Demography is destiny," Eileen recognized a growing need for diverse perspectives in media. She co-founded SoftLine Information, launching Ethnic NewsWatch, a pioneering database that provided access to newspapers and magazines from ethnic and minority communities. A 1993 article described it this way:
"The multicultural database, made up of newspapers and magazines of the ethnic and minority press offers an alternative perspective. It's a body of material that has never been collected and has long been invisible," said Eileen H. Heckerling, president of SoftLine [Information, Inc.]. The database includes full-text articles from 75 publications, including the Arab American, Armenian Reporter, Asian Week, Baltimore Jewish Times, Baltimore Afro-American, Cherokee Advocate, and La Prensa.
She established relationships with both the publishers and the librarians who purchased the database. Through the years, the likes of powerful African American publishing entrepreneurs, Native American Chiefs and midwestern librarians looked forward to her visits and came to be friends with whom she would stay in contact for years after Softline was sold.
Before the rise of automated digital conversion, the production process was intensely manual. Publishers mailed physical copies of their newspapers, buckets of which were picked up daily from the post office. Local data-entry workers, often moms with children in tow, picked up the papers at Eileen's home, and later at SoftLine's offices on lower Summer Street, and painstakingly transcribed articles by hand. As technology evolved, so did the product, moving from floppy disks to CD-ROM, then to LexisNexis, and eventually to direct online access, a timeline that depicts technology's history like a soil sample depicts Earth's. Over time, SoftLine expanded to include databases focused on alternative health and LGBTQ publications-before such acronyms were widely recognized. Eileen and her business partner sold SoftLine Information in 2001.
Eileen never embraced the concept of "retirement". She redirected her energy into Stamford's civic and cultural life, continuing a long history of community involvement that had begun in the 1970s, when she advocated for seat belts on school buses. She became active in local Democratic politics, serving on committees and vetting candidates. Later, she took on the role of curator for Stamford's annual downtown outdoor art exhibits, where she delighted in researching artists from around the country and selecting large-scale sculptures for the annual exhibits. Many of those artists became longtime correspondents and dear friends.
A talented artist and writer herself, Eileen had a deep appreciation for fine art, design, light and color (especially a nice, powerful red), as well as music, theater, poetry and storytelling in all forms. She was brilliant, quick-witted, and instinctively passionate about social justice, qualities that shaped both her personal and professional lives. Whether debating policy, nurturing friendships, or doting on her grandchildren, she brought the same fierce dedication and warmth.
She is survived by her sons, Jeremy (Jessica) and Matthew (Netahly), and her three beloved grandchildren, Judah, Bear, and Dylan. Eileen's legacy lives on through the family and friends she cherished, the voices she amplified, and the community she helped shape.
A memorial service will be held at Temple Sinai on April 2, 2025, at 10:30 AM. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Alzheimer's Association ( www.alz.org ) or the International Child Art Foundation ( icaf.org ).
Services are under the care of Thomas M. Gallagher Funeral Home, located at 104 Myrtle Ave., Stamford, CT 06902. For online condolences, please visit Gallagherfuneralhome.com .