One of this area’s all-time greatest singing voices went silent on November 14. Reese McHenry died that morning, felled by metastatic sarcoma after years of suffering through multiple health struggles . She was just 51 years old.
Officially, McHenry was survived by her mother, a brother, and her husband of 18 years, Justin. But her family was much, much broader than that. In a way, you could list the entire local music community as survivors. Quite apart from the magic she conjured onstage going back to her days fronting Dirty Little Heaters, McHenry was one of the most universally beloved figures on the scene.
“She was also a nanny who raised a lot of people’s children, pets, homes, and broken hearts,” says her longtime friend and fellow musician Mimi McLaughlin, from Magnolia Collective. “It’s hard to memorialize such a big person. She had a gigantic heart, and it was battery-operated.”…