by Julie Mackaman

Raised in Bennington and Woodford, Jackie Marro went to school at Saint Francis de Sales and Bennington Catholic High School before going on to earn her undergraduate degree in clothing and textiles from the University of Vermont (where she met her husband, Tony Marro), a graduate degree in education from New York University, and an MBA from the University of Maryland. Planning to spend time in Vermont and eventually retire here, she and Tony bought the historic Bennington Schoolhouse.

A professor of pattern and design and videographer with museum credentials and now retired, Jackie is glad to split her time between their new quarters in the Putnam Hotel building and Rhode Island, where their daughter lives. She says she loves Vermont for the reasons that many of us do: the relaxed lifestyle pace and intimacy possible in small communities, and an ethos that values the environment and makes “the right choices” in how to live and treat each other.

Jackie Marro’s suffragist installation at The Dollhouse and Toy Museum of Vermont, which preceded her making of the AAUW documentary, From Corsets to Combinations, is on view until mid-May.     

You may already know Jackie, or if not, her name may ring a bell. She is the owner/operator of the magical The Dollhouse and Toy Museum of Vermont, where her exhibition on suffragist dolls is on view until mid-May, to be replaced by an exhibition on fairies and gnomes. Specializing in small-scale installations, she laughingly calls one of its sections “Vt MoMA,” for Vermont Museum of Miniature Art.   (See Hello Dolly! for more.)

Among her many other activities, she is the mastermind behind the Bennington Museum’s Aiken Wildflower Trail (she recruits fellow gardeners by promising “exercise with a purpose”) and helps develop educational programs for the Bennington Performing Arts Center, where she is now working on a pilot workshop on making puppets.

She was first introduced to AAUW when her husband Tony was a guest speaker, and got to know us through interactions with branch members and through producing the suffragist-era fashion documentary, From Corsets to Combinations, which premiered in August 2020. (During the pandemic year, while others of us were binge watching Netflix, baking still another loaf of banana bread and letting our belts out a notch, Jackie was making a movie!) And now she has joined us as a new member!