Autumn Years Fall 2024

the renowned drummer Babatunde Olatunji (1927-2003). “Meeting Baba changed my life. Drumming became a passion.” “I got into drumming about 1985 because of workshops. Every year teachers would take groups to Guinea, and I couldn’t go because of personal and professional responsibilities. But I was approaching 60, and said ‘if not now, when?’,” she says. Also, she had gotten into Transcendental Meditation, and the institute enhanced her interests in the Science of Creative Intelligence, a program taught by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of TM. She also studied Chinese medicine and polarity therapy. Her first trip to Guinea was in 2003 with her drumming teacher M’bemba Bangoura, who gave her the name “Hadja” when she arrived at his compound. Her future husband was an adjunct teacher on that trip. She

Kathleen’s original artwork depicting drum playing.

jobs included being a secretary and being a waitress. For a while when living in Fairview, she had a little clothing store. Her skills as a secretary led to a job with the Bergen County Health Department. There she worked in an Addiction Recovery Program that provided

court referrals to provide education and rehabilitation in lieu of sentencing for drug-and-alcohol-related offences. She grew into the role of clinical supervisor of that program for criminal offenders. “I gained as much personally and professionally as anyone who went through the program,” Kathleen says. “Once we got the program up and running we had to do continuing education and that started me on doing a whole exploration of personal development. That’s when I started going to the Omega Institute and got into holistic healing work,” Kathleen says. At the institute in Rhinebeck, New York, one of her teachers was

as a child at St. Joseph’s Elementary School in West New York. The students all donated to “the children in Africa,” and she fantasized about adopting an African child. She married after graduating from St. Joseph’s High School and had two children, Robert Henkel and Denise Henkel Long. She is proud of her 15-year-old grandson Griffin Wallace Henkel, who has a role in the film Lost on a Mountain in Maine . The film was shown in the Maine Film Festival and hit theaters this summer. She has three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, who also bring her great joy. After a divorce, she raised Robert and Denise as a single mom. Kathleen’s

Kathleen met N’Nassady in 2003 and they became a couple after her third trip to Guinea.

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AUTUMN YEARS I FALL 2024