Henrietta Jaeger, community activist, painter, playwright
Henrietta Starr Malloy Jaeger, 90, of Devon, a longtime community volunteer and an amateur painter and playwright, died Sunday, Feb. 21, at her home. She had cancer.
Henrietta Starr Malloy Jaeger, 90, of Devon, a longtime community volunteer and an amateur painter and playwright, died Sunday, Feb. 21, at her home. She had cancer.
Known as "Penny," Mrs. Jaeger was born in Bala Cynwyd and grew up in Philadelphia. She graduated from Friends Select School and majored in architecture and interior design at the University of Pennsylvania.
Later, she received a bachelor of fine arts degree from Penn. She was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, serving on the sorority's board of directors.
In 1949, she married Eugene Adam Jaeger, a graduate of Jefferson Medical College. He later became a well-known psychiatrist and neurologist.
The couple lived on the grounds of Norristown State Hospital while he completed a residency in psychiatry and then served on the hospital staff.
During that time, Mrs. Jaeger became president of the Norristown State Hospital Women's Auxiliary.
The couple collaborated on a book titled Five Strolled Into Madness, published in 2010 by America Star Books. The book is an account of "a psychiatrist and his family who lived on the grounds of a state mental hospital in the 1950s and how living amongst the truly insane affected them," according to a review on Amazon.com.
After moving to Devon in 1959, Mrs. Jaeger volunteered for committees of the Devon Horse Show. She also was on Thomas Jefferson University Hospital's women's board and the Valley Forge Historical Society's women's committee.
She went "basseting" with the Sky Castle French Hounds. Basseting is a sport in which a pack of the low-slung hounds - with hunters on foot - tracks a cottontail rabbit through brush. The intent is to corner, not kill, the rabbit.
The cottontail "will go 50 to 100 yards and dive into a hole. This is why, on a basset hunt, very little seems to happen," wrote Edwin A. Peeples in the 2005 The Genteel Sport of Basseting, reprinted from a Dec. 21, 1975, Inquirer Magazine article.
Mrs. Jaeger was a founding member of the Women's Committee for Big Brothers of America; the Emerald Ball for Inglis House; the Tri-City Swim Meet; the Franklin Institute's women's committee; and the Historic Yellow Springs Committee; and a founder of the Main Line Antique Club and its show, over which she presided for 30 years.
She painted in oils and won a number of art awards in national contests.
Mrs. Jaeger was an actress and playwright. A member of the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Players Club and other theatrical groups, she wrote three plays that were staged in Philadelphia and along the Main Line.
Between 2007 and 2015, Mrs. Jaeger worked with her son, James Rudolph Jaeger II, and others to produce seven feature-length documentaries on the Constitution. One of them, Fiat Empire, featuring former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, and Edwin Vieira, brother of Meredith Vieira, won a Telly Award in 2007.
She was a member of the Union League of Philadelphia, Orpheus Club of Philadelphia, National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, Colonial Dames 17th Century, and Daughters of the American Revolution.
Besides her son, she is survived by a son, Eugene Adam Jaeger Jr.; a daughter, Lorraine Jaeger Sterling; and five grandchildren. Her husband died in 2008.
A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26, at St. David's Episcopal Church, 763 S. Valley Forge Rd., Wayne, followed by a visitation in St. David's Episcopal Chapel. Burial is private.
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