Meet Marianne Dekoven

by Judy Kniffin

Marianne Dekoven arrived by Caesarian section on Halloween day in a New York City hospital in 1948. An only child (but not intentionally) she moved with her parents to Chicago when she was five and grew up in Barack Obama’s neighborhood in Hyde Park. Coincidentally, the apartment she lived in was owned by the family of Valerie Jarrett; and her homework desk was later used in Barack Obama’s senate campaign office!

Marianne’s elementary education took place in the local public school, which was about 50/50 black/white when she first enrolled in the early 50’s. By the time she left for high school, the student population had shifted to 98% black, swelled by children from an adjacent neighborhood. To a very young Marianne, the entire world seemed simply a mix of black and Jewish! Her high school education, on the other hand, took place at the University of Chicago’s campus high school and no doubt broadened—nay, totally shifted—her sense of the scope of humanity.

College studies earned Marianne her BA in 1969 at Radcliffe College (which became Harvard-Radcliffe while she was there). She’d had high hopes of entering drama school and coming out a theater director, but it seemed that was not an option. So in 1976 she instead earned her Ph.D. in English at California’s Stanford University.

With her husband, Julien Hennefeld, Marianne owned and occupied a brownstone house in Brooklyn’s Park Slope district for 38 years, while she taught English at Rutgers University and he taught math at Brooklyn College. Two children came along: Daniel Hennefeld in 1977, and Maggie (Margaret) Hennefeld in 1984. Summer escapes from the hot streets of the City took them to Killington, VT, where ski housing was affordable in the summertime. Julien played tennis and Marianne dove mountain hiking with a passion. Next step: they bought a house in Pittsford, just north of Rutland, VT.

When both finally retired from teaching, they decided to move to Bennington, since this was an easy drive to the Brooklyn of their former years that was also home to their son Daniel, an attorney for the Federal Dept. of Labor, and his wife Jivelle. On the day Trump was elected, Daniel and Jivelle’s daughter Sidney was born! Last April, they decided to “get out of Dodge” and come live with Marianne and Julien—one of the high points of the year for the proud grandparents—or for 5 months anyway. They now live in a house six minutes away, “a godsend,” Marianne exults. Daughter Maggie lives with her husband Alex in Minneapolis, where she teaches film and media studies at the University of Minnesota.

Marianne shares that, apart from her extended family, her two main interests at the moment involve writing and, for lack of a better term, “nature.” But going forward in time, what she would dearly love to see happening in Bennington and elsewhere is a big improvement in racial awareness and tolerance. Her daughter-in-law, Jivelle, is an Afro-Caribbean from Panama, which also makes her granddaughter biracial.  Marianne dares to hope that celebrating her granddaughter’s fourth birthday on the day Biden was declared the 2020 election winner is a clear sign that her young life will blossom to the fullest. May we all help that happen!