BELLOWS FALLS-Community activist, writer, and Bellows Falls Village Trustee Susan MacNeil lived her last few hours exactly as she’d lived the previous 72 years.
Committed all of her life to social justice, on the evening of Jan. 8, MacNeil attended a hastily organized candlelight memorial downtown in memory of Renee Good, who had been killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents earlier in the week in Minneapolis.
On the way to the rally, MacNeil, a lover of good food, drink, and music, stopped at the Ciao Popolo restaurant.
One of her last Facebook posts was a photo of the cocktail and this comment: “Enjoying a Winter Warlock at Ciao Popolo before the ICE rally at 6:15 p.m. at Fireman’s Park followed by the Bellows Falls Opera House show. Today we deserve to drink, to resist and to appreciate great music from four classic singers.”
Following the concert, MacNeil went home, changed into her pajamas, and suffered a fatal medical incident.
Her best friend found her Saturday morning when she checked on her after not hearing from MacNeil as expected.
Word of her passing quickly spread across social media. She had lived in Bellows Falls since 2015 and made many friends there and was very active in the community.
Hundreds expressed their condolences and shock at her death.
Many wrote of MacNeil’s kindness, care and willingness to help others. Her sole granddaughter, Kiyah Glenn-Ellsworth, who was extremely close to MacNeil all her life, also wants people to remember that her grandmother was “maternal, yes, but she was utterly fierce and fearless” in her support for those she felt were marginalized or mistreated.
“The fact that one of the very last things my grandmother did was to attend an anti-ICE rally is the most Susan MacNeil thing she could have done!” Glenn-Ellsworth said.
A lifetime of service and activism
Born in Massachusetts and raised in Connecticut, the young MacNeil was a gifted student, a voracious reader, and a talented writer. Joan Donahue, a best friend since they were both 5 years old, said that MacNeil was “very well self-educated,” and very committed to social justice from a young age.
Her prodigious energy and intellect found expression in her work with dozens of arts, community, civic, and health organizations.
In the late 1980s she moved to the Keene, New Hampshire, area. She served as PTA president at elementary schools in Franklin and Marlow, New Hampshire, later becoming an executive board member of the New Hampshire PTA. She served as vice-chair and then chair of the Operating Staff Council at Keene State College. She was director of marketing and, later, interim executive director of the Colonial Theatre in Keene.
She wrote and self-published When Jumanji Came to Keene, an account of the production of the 1995 feature film, which she covered as a reporter for Entertainment Times. An updated version of the book was released in 2025 to mark the 30th anniversary of the film’s release.
MacNeil has been eulogized by Falls Area Community Television, where she was remembered for her “unwavering support of public access television” in both Keene and Bellows Falls.
She found a special calling in her work with the LGBTQIA+ community and with those affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
In a public Facebook post, Hans Johnson, the former board vice-chair of the National LGBTQ Task Force, described MacNeil as “perhaps the most fervent ally of #LGBTQ people I have ever worked with in all 50 states & D.C.”
She served as executive director of AIDS Services for the Monadnock Region from 2000 until 2008 and again from 2009 to 2014.
As part of that work, she created community programs like Just Desserts, Keene Karaoke Idol, and later Southern Vermont Idol.
She took special pride in bringing the AIDS Memorial Quilt to local communities each year for World AIDS Day. In 2025, she had the quilt displayed from the roof of the former Andrews Inn in downtown Bellows Falls. And in 2024, Bellows Falls Pride displayed the historic 14-foot-by-25-foot “Section 93,” a piece of the original Key West Sea-to-Sea Rainbow Flag, from the same rooftop.
Her granddaughter said that MacNeil “always felt strongly about” LGBTQIA+ rights, and that she was writing about that issue as far back as the 1960s and 1970s.
“She wanted to help break the stigma,” Glenn-Ellsworth said, noting that her grandmother’s “professional life was personal for me as well.”
“I’m also an activist,” she said. “I was raised by her in that environment.”
Joining her at rallies for former Gov. Howard Dean’s 2004 Democratic presidential bid and marches for women’s rights, Glenn-Ellsworth said that MacNeil “made sure I knew it was important to have an opinion and to fight for people’s rights, to stand up for them.”
MacNeil often spoke of a trip to the Kingdom of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) with her granddaughter in 2019 as one of the highlights of her life.
Glenn-Ellsworth said that she will “try to continue the work” that MacNeil was doing. “My Nana never looked for a thank-you,” Glenn-Ellsworth said. “If she saw positive change in the community, that was enough for her.”
Last week, in memory of MacNeil, Glenn-Ellsworth had the last words her grandmother wrote to her tattooed on her shoulder. In MacNeil’s handwriting.
A final chapter in Bellows Falls
After moving to Bellows Falls in 2015, MacNeil didn’t slow down, she just found a new community to focus her energy on. She worked at Landmark College for several years.
A work accident in 2022, while limiting her physically, did not interfere with her community activism.
But that same year MacNeil experienced a life-changing tragedy.
She had been very close to her mother and cared for her through the end of her life.
As her mother was close to death in a hospital, MacNeil was trying to talk with her. Her mother, who had a hearing impairment, was supposed to be provided with an amplified telephone, which would have made a phone conversation possible.
But due to a mix-up, the phone was not available, and MacNeil had an excruciating experience trying to have a last conversation that her mother could neither hear nor understand.
Out of that horrible experience, MacNeil wrote and self-published 18 Minutes: A Daughter’s Primer on Life & Death, both a tribute and memoir for her mother and a treatise on death and dying.
MacNeil took that experience and used it to advocate for amplified phones in hospital rooms and nursing homes. She also collaborated with Kasey March, the founder of Doula Care for Dying, to create a workshop, “Life, Death and Cake: Preparing for a Good Death.” It was designed to help families gracefully and openly deal with end-of-life planning.
‘An invaluable force for good’
“Susan was, indeed, a wonder,” said Bellows Falls artist and activist Charlie Hunter. “She had such warmhearted passion for the things she believed in.”
Hunter said he met her when she first came to the town. MacNeil was helping Robert McBride with publicity for his Rockingham Arts and Museum Project.
“Since then, she has been an invaluable force for good in countless community projects. Those where we have intersected often have been Rockingham for Progress (RFP) — overseeing the Miss Bellows Falls Diner project — and volunteer work with the Bellows Falls Opera House under the aegis of Rockingham Entertainment Development (RED).”
With RED, Hunter said, MacNeil helped write the group’s 2022 bylaws and, in 2023, she helped “develop the first membership program for the Opera House, attempting to help stem the operational losses that the Opera House incurs each year. From that, her ongoing passion for independent film led to our collaboration on BFFilms in 2024.”
That is a program through which “regional and local filmmakers can screen their work at the Opera House,” Hunter said.
“In the subsequent 18 months, she wrangled more than a dozen film screenings, ranging from emerging filmmakers such as Matt Munroe and Gavin Key to luminaries such as Charles Light, Bess O’Brien, and Jay Craven,” Hunter said.
In collaboration with Bellows Falls Pride, Hunter said, MacNeil “annually pounded the pavement procuring sponsors for Pride Month movies each June, and she was hoping to find sponsors for a Coming-Out Month Classic Film in October — in fact, we were scheduled to start meeting about her 2026 film plans this coming week!”
Hunter added that he had “been so impressed with Susan’s dedication and genuine love of movies that this year,” RED asked her to choose a public domain film for a Classic Film Wednesday in her honor.
MacNeil chose the Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor sequel to Father of the Bride, the 1951 film Father’s Little Dividend.
“Little did I imagine it would turn out to be a memorial screening,” Hunter said.
In addition, Hunter will work with Bellows Falls Pride to endow a Susan MacNeil Film Series for the Opera House, with a goal of underwriting “two Pride movies each June, a Coming-Out Month film in October, an independent/local film screening, and an annual out-of-copyright Classic Film at the Opera House.”
An anonymous donor has already pledged to match up to $2,500 for the series, toward a goal of $5,000. Those interested in donating can visit tinyurl.com/SusanMacNeil.
The series would operate in the same spirit as the Ray Massucco Concert Series — formed after the death of Bellows Falls lawyer and civic volunteer Ray Massucco, who died in 2022 — “which provides a wonderful living memorial to the music Ray loved,” Hunter said.
Hunter also worked with MacNeil on the RFP project of restoring the Miss Bellows Falls Diner, where he called her a “life force.” MacNeil’s expertise with nonprofits and grant applications was of tremendous help to the group, he said.
“Not only must grants be applied for,” Hunter said, “if received, there is very specific paperwork that must be done in order to receive the actual money. Susan handled all that without breaking a sweat.”
Hunter also remembered MacNeil’s “delight in things.”
“She loved fancy cocktails and grant applications, movies of all sorts, music that she randomly got introduced to, drag shows, meatloaf dinners and the Moose Lodge, all our local restaurants, people of means and people who had virtually nothing material in the world,” he said. “She was a real good egg, and I miss her a ton already.”
The final line of her obituary, found elsewhere in this issue, and which lists many more of her accomplishments than this article, sums her life up succinctly: “Susan MacNeil lived her life by showing up — with compassion, courage, kindness, and conviction.
“Her difference was immense, and her legacy will continue in every life she touched.”
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Reporter Robert F. Smith adds this personal note: Susan MacNeil was also my friend and close neighbor, and I heartily agree with Charlie Hunter’s assessment of her.
We lived in side-by-side apartments for a decade, until she moved into the newly constructed Bellows Falls Garage apartment house two years ago.
We kept an eye out for each other and our fellow apartment dwellers. We helped install and remove air conditioning units when the seasons changed. We’d cook extra food to share, or we’d shop for someone too ill to go out. It was all part of the community we’d developed.
During Covid, MacNeil found plenty of time to bake — which she did very well — and it was not unusual to find a bag of her latest creation hanging on the front doorknob. Instead of complaints, she sent encouraging texts when I occasionally practiced guitar in the evenings.
She was a good neighbor.
Visiting hours for Susan MacNeil will take place on Friday, Jan. 23, from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Fenton & Hennessey Funeral Home, 55 Westminster St., Bellows Falls, with food and drink at Ciao Popolo, 36 The Square, from 6 p.m. Her family is planning celebrations of life: one in April, and one in July for her birthday. An obituary appears in the Milestones column on pages B4-B5.
This News item by Robert F. Smith was written for The Commons.