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Caring for the People
ty served Jennie Kitcountry for the Lowecades. three d
BY AMY COYNE BREDESON
Jennie Kitty spent her life caring for people. A home health aide and midwife, she raised nine children, including a few she and her husband, Deacon Renty Kitty, Sr., took in as their own. “Anybody we brought home with us was welcome,” the couple’s son, the Rev. Dr. Renty Kitty, Jr., said. Jennie took care of every child — at home and at work — as if they were her own. Her children say she loved everyone, no matter their color or background, and she would do anything to help another human being. Born in Port Royal, Jennie was a graduate of Robert Smalls School and Penn School. She worked at the Bluffton Health Clinic for 27 years. Now the building where she served for almost three decades bears her name. The Town of Bluffton’s Watershed Management Building, located at 1261 May River Road, is the same building that once held the health clinic. Jennie died March 4 at the age of 90. To honor her hard work and dedication to the community, the Town of Bluffton changed the name of the structure to the Jennie Kitty Municipal Building. “That means so much because that’s the place where 28 // H I LT O N H E A D M O N T H LY. C O M
she first started to give care to people,” Jennie’s son Robert Kitty said. In April, the South Carolina House of Representatives passed a resolution to remember and celebrate Jennie’s life. During her career Jennie delivered 39 babies. When she saw that parasites were killing low-income and African American children in the area, she fought for better healthcare for them. And when the Ku Klux Klan threatened her white boss for saving the lives of Black children, she made sure he and his family were safe. At the clinic, Jennie worked alongside head nurse Jane Pitts and Dr. Donald Gatch, one of the few local white doctors who treated Black patients. Gatch became known nationally as “the hunger doctor” after he spoke up about malnutrition and intestinal parasites, according to a March 11, 1971, article in The New York Review. Gatch called out the other doctors in the area for their discriminatory practices. The doctor called Jennie one day from his private practice near Simmonsville Road and S.C. 46. He
