HUDSON–Sarah Yorke (Rah) Rentschler of Hudson died suddenly of heart failure on September 6, 2009. She was 59 years old.
Born in 1950 in Minneapolis Minn., she spent her childhood in Lake Forest, Ill. She attended the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Conn., and Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville (Westchester County,) before setting down longtime roots in New York City.
She managed the renowned Vorpal Gallery in Soho, and subsequently managed the Vorpal in San Francisco. Returning to Manhattan, she opened the Sarah Y. Rentschler Gallery in her legendary penthouse space in Chelsea, with later locations on Greene Street in Soho, in Bridgehampton and Water Mill, New York, and finally on Warren Street in Hudson, where she brought many emerging artists into focus. She had a stint as a features writer at The San Francisco Progress, a weekly newspaper edited and published by her father William H. Rentschler, of whom she was a chip off the old block. Sarah later founded the Complicated Goat caterers with her longtime love Daniel Bleckinger. And if platters could talk! Based in Hudson, concocting moveable feasts near and far, the company included cooking classes for kids.
Ms. Rentschler was an avid reader and writer, leaving behind many works in progress. She was a force of nature, with an incredible eye, an innate sense of style, and an enormous and loyal heart. Ms. Rentschler was a rebel who was often known to say “What trouble can we get into?!?” There is no one like her; she was ‘uni-Q’ in the words of her adoring mother, Sylvia.
Over her lifetime Ms. Rentschler mothered and loved a menagerie of domestic and wild animals; there were the goats Hote and Ginnie, Walker, Maaa, and Audrey; cats Wilhelmina Scooter Livingston, Olivia, Sebastian, Bandita, Owly, and a latecomer adoptee from Hamilton, Ohio named Daytona; dogs Rufus, Felicia and Cora Dijon; and an indoor-outdoor chicken named Red.
Ms. Rentschler was adored and will be missed by so many. She is survived by Daniel J. Bleckinger of Hudson; his children, Amber Wedin of New York City, Mark Wedin of Portland, Ore.; mother, Sylvia Angevin Thompson of Edgartown, Mass. and Geneva, Ill; father William Henry Rentschler of Hamilton, Ohio; siblings Peter Ferris Rentschler of Pensacola, Fla., Mary Angevin Rentschler of Vineyard Haven, Mass., Phoebe Rentschler Cole of Weston, Conn., Alexandra Angevin Thompson of Venice, Calif. and Geneva, Ill.; Hope Rentschler Garbo of Ross, Calif; and stepstiblings Lydia Thompson Whitehead of Chevy Chase, Md, and Wallace Underwood Thompson of St. Charles, Ill. Ms. Rentschler was Auntie Mame to the following nieces and nephews: Christine Angevin Rentschler; Peter Gadsden Rentschler; William Christopher Rentschler; Sophie Angevin Cole; Albion Angevin Alley; Henry Walker Cole; Lucie Snowdon Garbo; Mason Henry Garbo; and Bella Hanson Garbo.
Her cherished step-father, George Wallace Thompson, of Geneva, Ill., died previously.
A memorial service will be held at Eyebrow Farm, 111 Ten Broeck Lane, Hudson.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Animalkind, 721 Warren Street, Hudson, NY 12534and Dan Bleckinger’s “Free Spirits Children’s Tennis Development,” 111 Ten Broeck Lane, Hudson, NY 12534).
