By Bob Hennelly

On October 20, 2022, my youngest sister, Rachel Hennelly, 62, died in hospice care at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey. My other sister, Jennifer, was with her. She had been triumphantly battling cancer for two years, but the COVID she contracted at a rehabilitation facility after being transferred from a hospital ended her brave battle.

Before the COVID infection, we had reasonably hoped we might have at least another six months with her — perhaps, another Christmas.

Rachel was a ballet dancer, a member of Actors’ Equity and the American Guild of Musical Artists, a juggler, and a prolific folk artist. She designed and made marionettes — from carving to costuming — that she used to entertain children of all ages in the subways and streets of NYC, or wherever people would gather.  She routinely set up shop outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art or near Lincoln Center to sell her creations, which were like her children.

On occasion, someone would ask her to custom create a literary or historical figure as a marionette. I remember her creating a miniature broach for a 12-inch Emily Dickinson.  She would hand over a marionette to a tourist, who promised to send the money — but she was never stiffed. Yet, she distrusted the internet but reluctantly used the iPhone we gave her, since it had a great camera. But, as my brother Chris reminded me, she thought children should put down their phones and make something with their hands.

One of my regrets is that she never acted on my suggestion she make an 18-inch Putin puppet that was controlling a six-inch Donald Trump. She definitely could have done that!

Rachel hand-carved her puppets, hand-painted their faces, created their accessories, and created their costumes, all in a fashion that harkened back to America’s earliest traditions of homespun handicrafts. When she came to live with my wife Debbie and me in 2018, when we lived in Mendham Township, she thought nothing of packing up her menagerie and setting up shop in front of the Brookside Post Office. She developed some pretty decent interest in her marionettes there.  Her bicentennial collection was also a big hit at the Brookside 4th of July parade.

As a street artist she had a detailed grasp of the U.S. Constitution and the case law created after Mayor Giuliani and the NYPD treated artists like panhandlers. Before that precedent was set, violating the municipal regulations was considered a misdemeanor triable by the criminal courts of New York City and punishable by up to 90 days in jail or a fine of up to $1,000.

Rachel knew just where she could legally stand outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, thanks to the court ultimately upholding the First Amendment rights of artists to display their wares. Before she branched out into marionettes, she specialized in making and selling felt puppets that would populate a Christmas creche, but they were confiscated by the NYPD. Of course, she bailed out Baby Jesus and his entourage.

Rachel wanted no part of Twitter or Facebook and always kept an eye out for who was filming her while she was performing on the streets. Debbie did convince her to load the pictures of her creation onto Pinterest. I am so glad she did.

It takes an unusual character to build and hold a crowd in the New York City Transit system, operating her marionette Prima Ballerina Puppenskaya doing the “Dying Swan,” but she did. Her Magical Marionette Theater also starred The Amazing Puppenini, the last of the great vaudevillians master magician and violinist. Her ability to miniaturize standard party magic tricks — and have an 18-inch-tall marionette perform sleight-of-hand — left audiences baffled.

Magical Marionette Theater entertained thousands of children and adults at dozens of venues; the Lincoln Center Out-of-Door Festival; the Museum of Natural History; the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Paramount Theater, Madison Square Garden; and she was selected to be an act for the MTA’s Music Under New York Series, as well as the Holiday Market at Grand Central Station. While she lived with us in Mendham, she also gave multiple performances for children at the 2018 Lake Mohawk German Christmas Market.

Rachel was a classically trained ballet dancer who studied with Irene Fokine and American Ballet Theater. She was an experienced juggler, who combined the circus arts with dance in appearances at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, and the New York Theater Ballet, Gould Hall, the National Actor Theater Gala with Tony Randall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Children’s Festival, the Showboat Casino, and several other regional theaters across the country.

“One of the highlights of the divertissements was a lively Russian carnival sequence in which Rachel Hennelly juggled while she danced,” wrote Jack Anderson, dance critic with the New York Times, of Rachel’s performance in “The Nutcracker” for the New York Theater Ballet.

She had been a featured dance soloist with the Houston Grand Opera, the Lake George Opera Festival, the Village Light Opera, and also toured with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The stint with the circus was evidently a short one. My fearless sister had a warrior spirit, but she beelined for the big top exit when she was told she would have to lay prone while an elephant placed its foot on her head.

Thanks to providence, her own inner fortitude, her boundless optimism, her physical fitness, her love of the arts, the daily support of our sister Jennifer, and the compassionate care of her doctors, nurses and techs at Holy Name, she lived well beyond the initial prognosis two years ago, which had given her about six months to live.

After a seizure a few weeks back, she was hospitalized at Holy Name to begin a course of radiation treatments. After a few days there, she was moved — on a Friday night — to a rehabilitation facility just down the street. The apparent plan was for her to be brought back and forth each day for her radiation treatment at Holy Name. A day after she was moved from the hospital, we were notified that three staff members at the rehab facility had tested positive for COVID. It wasn’t long before Rachel was infected, and she rapidly declined. She was back at the hospital, but the COVID infection proved to be insurmountable. She held on long enough so that, at the end, she was no longer infectious, and we were able to be with her.

That was a blessing.

Before Rachel was hospitalized, she had arranged for an exhibit of some of her marionettes at the Ridgewood Library for the month of October. We managed to get the display installed to her remote, bed-ridden satisfaction. She had also arranged for an exhibit at the Hasbrouck Heights Library for November.

We expect the Magical Marionette Theater will continue to tour. We would be delighted to find a venue for a Fifth Avenue display… Ultimately, we would love to see Rachel’s dozens of marionettes — her legacy — find a permanent home in a Folk Art Museum as a reminder of what Americans can create with their own hands.

Coincidentally, on that day and hour that she left this earthly plane, I was at the funeral mass for Dr. Joseph Fennelly, 94, at St. Vincent Martyr in Madison, New Jersey. As I waited for the service to get underway, I noticed that Dr. Joe’s birthday was August 9, 1929. Rachel’s is August 9, 1960. The realization was surreal.

He was an attending physician based out of the Morristown Medical Center for over 55 years and chaired the bioethics committee of the Medical Society of New Jersey for over half a century. He was an early advocate for patients’ rights as well as end-of-life issues.

He collaborated with Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and Dr. Edmund Pelligrino, who were both pioneers in this challenging field. He was the medical counsel and advisor to the family of Karen Ann Quinlan, who never regained consciousness after she fell into an irreversible coma for several years. Her case, and the court decisions it generated, laid the foundation for today’s hospice standard of care, something that my sister Rachel embraced and from which she surely benefited.

For years, Dr. Joe had been a source and mentor for me on the impact of the medical industrial complex that puts profits ahead of people. His insights during the pandemic were so essential to my understanding of just how badly we were doing relative to our nation’s wealth, our potential, and our cruel refusal to embrace universal healthcare.

I know we are supposed to be “over” COVID, and yet hundreds of people continue to die every day. We are well past the stage where New Jersey Governor Murphy highlights a few short bios of the dearly departed for reporters.  Our elected officials, from the White House to the State House, need this all to be in the rearview mirror.

Yet, someone’s loved ones are still dying, and the people that treat them still face the risk of a life-altering bout with the virus that killed more than a million Americans — and still counting. Gaps in infection control in congregant care settings — like the one Rachel was sent to — are still killing people, as is our failure to sufficiently invest in public health.