COVID comes home: My sister Rachel Patricia Hennelly, 1960-2022

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

Before the COVID infection, we had reasonably hoped we might have at least another six months with Rachel — 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 New York, 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 brooch for a 12-inch-tall Emily Dickinson. She would hand over a marionette to a tourist who promised to send the money — and as far as I know, she never got stiffed. 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 after she left us, Rachel always said 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 to make an 18-inch Vladimir 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 in central New Jersey, 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 Fourth of July parade.

As a street artist she had a detailed grasp of the U.S. Constitution and the case law created after the New York Police Department, in the Rudy Giuliani era, began treating artists like panhandlers. Before that important First Amendment precedent was set, violating the municipal regulations was considered a criminal misdemeanor, potentially 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, thanks to the ultimate court decision upholding the First Amendment right 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, some of which were confiscated by the NYPD. Of course Rachel bailed out Baby Jesus and his entourage.

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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. My wife Debbie finally convinced Rachel to upload pictures of her creation to 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 Rachel did it. 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 Doors festival, the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Paramount Theater and Madison Square Garden, among many others. Rachel was selected 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 the legendary Irine Fokine and at American Ballet Theater. She was an experienced juggler, who combined the circus arts with dance in appearances at Avery Fisher Hall, the New York Theater Ballet, Gould Hall, the National Actor Theater Gala with Tony Randall, the BAMkids Film Festival, the Showboat Casino and 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 1991 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 and the Village Light Opera, and also toured with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Her circus career was evidently brief: My sister was fearless and had a warrior spirit, but made a beeline for the big top exit when she was told to lie 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, when she was given 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 radiation treatments 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 her condition rapidly declined. She was moved back to the hospital, but the COVID infection proved insurmountable. She held on long enough so that, by 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 Public Library for the month of October. We managed to get the display installed so she could approve it remotely, from her hospital bed. She had also arranged for an exhibit at the Hasbrouck Heights Library in November.

We expect the Magical Marionette Theater will continue to tour. We would be delighted to find a venue for a Fifth Avenue display, should anyone who loved and remembers Rachel's puppetry feel moved to help with that. Ultimately, we would love to see Rachel's dozens of marionettes — her true artistic legacy — find a permanent home, perhaps in a folk art museum, as a reminder of what Americans can create with their own hands.

Coincidentally, at the exact day and hour that Rachel left this earthly plane, I was attending the funeral mass for Dr. Joseph Fennelly 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 Aug. 9, 1929. Rachel's was Aug. 9, 1960. That was a surreal moment.

Fennelly, who had died a few days earlier at age 94, was an attending physician based out of the Morristown Medical Center for more than 55 years. He 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 Pellegrino, pioneers in this challenging field. He was the medical counsel and adviser to the family of Karen Ann Quinlan, who never regained consciousness after she fell into an irreversible coma in 1975. for several years. Her case, and the court decisions it generated, laid the foundation for today's hospice standard of care, something 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 too often puts profit ahead of people. His insights during the pandemic were essential to my understanding of just how badly America was doing relative to our nation's wealth and potential, and the consequences of our cruel refusal to embrace universal health care.

I know we are supposed to be "over" COVID. Yet hundreds of people continue to die every day. We are well past the stage when New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy highlights a few short bios of the dearly departed every day for an audience of reporters. Our elected officials, from the White House to the state house, need all this to be in the rearview mirror.

Yet my loved one died last week. Many other people's loved ones died this week. More will die next week, and the people who treat them still face the risk of a life-altering bout with the virus that has killed more than a million Americans, and counting. Gaps in infection control in congregant-care settings — such as the one where Rachel contracted the virus — are still killing people, as is our failure to sufficiently invest in public health.