Actress and Princeton Public Schools teacher Peggy Henning dies at 97

Peggy Henning of Princeton passed away on Nov. 18 at Serenity Hospice at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in Hamilton. She was 97.

Born Peggy Menefee, she came into this world on Sept. 25, 1928, in Baltimore, Maryland. She was a rambunctious girl with lots of friends who spent her time imagining the possibilities. Her father was a renowned architect who designed buildings across Baltimore, and her mother was a gentle soul from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Peggy always challenged the norms of the times, which for women were limited to getting married and having babies or, if they wanted a career, becoming a secretary. After high school, she went off to Sullins Junior College in Bristol, Virginia, but it was more of a finishing school, and she quickly realized she didn’t want to be finished when her life was just starting.

She transferred to Syracuse University and knew she’d found home. She started off majoring in radio broadcasting, but after doing a play reading for a friend, the head of the drama department, Sawyer Falk, recruited her to join the Summer Theatre, where she enjoyed more than eight summers. Theater is where Peggy really began to shine. She worked her tail off and made many close friends, including Jerry Stiller. (Graduating class included Dick Clark, Jerry Stiller and Leo Bloom.)

She graduated with a degree in speech and drama in 1950 and was voted “The Outstanding Performer of the Year” by the staff and all the other actors in her class, an honor that was one of the greatest achievements of her professional life. She was also voted one of the top 10 seniors of the year and voted into Boar’s Head, the drama honorary, and Zeta Phi Eta, the national women’s speech honorary.

After college, she continued summer stock, honing her skills by rehearsing one play during the day while performing another at night. Finally, she took the leap and moved to New York, where she pounded the pavement daily while working odd jobs like being a cigarette girl at the Russian Tea Room. She had several successes, like doing a radio play with Paul Newman, but finally got the holy grail with a role in a Broadway show, The Long Watch (directed by John Larson and produced by Anthony Brady Farrell). After six weeks on the road, the show only ran for six performances on Broadway, but Peggy always got a big applause from the audience after her scenes. (She was also in Mistress Liggons, which sadly did not make it to New York.)

She grew disillusioned with the grind of being an actress in New York during the ‘50s and moved back to Baltimore, where she got a new role as Miss Peggy on the brand-new TV show Romper Room, produced by Bert Claster Productions. She flew around the country setting up franchises in different cities, doing the show there until the local Romper Room teacher got up to speed.

During this time, she was introduced to a tall, handsome man named Ted Henning, who quickly swept her off her feet, and the two were married in a June wedding. It wasn’t until 2022 that she learned her husband, originally from Germany, was a Ritchie Boy in the American Army, landing in Normandy on D-Day to fight the Nazis. Newly married, they left Baltimore for the New Jersey suburbs and bought a house in Madison, where their first child, Pamela Booth Henning, was born, followed two years later by their son, Theodore Walter Henning. But Peggy wanted more for her kids and moved them to Princeton, where they could take advantage of all the culture and energy a university town had to offer.

She quickly put her Romper Room skills to work and became a substitute teacher in the Princeton school system. After earning her education degree from Rutgers, she was hired full time at Princeton Middle School, first as a drama teacher, where she was notorious for using the Hokey Pokey to get kids moving, and then as a popular English and social studies teacher. She loved her students and they loved her (at least, most of them did), and she spent the years getting them to love poetry, understand different cultures and learn the importance of mutual respect for more than 25 years. She could rarely walk down Nassau Street without running into someone she had taught and stopping to catch up on how their lives were going.

When Peggy finally retired, she split her days between Princeton and Florida, where she spent most of her time on her favorite hobby, ballroom dancing. When the commute became too much, she moved into Princeton Windrows with her cat, Tripp, and spent her time with old and new friends alike. Her husband died in 1978 after she cared for him in a years-long battle with cancer. She is survived by her daughter, Pamela Henning; her son, Ted Henning; her daughter-in-law, Stefanie; and her grandchildren Jessie and Liam. The family is planning a celebration of life in Princeton early in 2026.