During most of their 72-year relationship, Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel told family and co-workers they were good friends and roommates.
Eventually, when they were in their 80s, Donahue and Henschel decided to come out of the closet to their family and acknowledge they were a lesbian couple.
‘A Secret Love’
Their poignant journey is spotlighted in Netflix’s “A Secret Love,” directed by Donahue’s great-nephew, Chris Bolan.
The touching and pull-at-your-heartstrings documentary follows the couple as they grow old together and wrestle with Donahue’s Parkinson’s disease diagnosis.
For Donahue, who died at the age of 93 in 2019, it was important to come out and tell people she and Henschel were a romantic couple.
“She didn’t want to go to the grave feeling like she’d lived a lie,” Bolan said in an interview with Time.
Pat Henschel, left, and Terry Donahue, (seen in a vintage photo) shared more than 70 years together as a lesbian couple. Their life is featured in the Netflix documentary “A Secret Love.” Photo: Netflix.
Terry Donahue
Donahue and Henschel met in 1947 when Donahue was 22 and played as a catcher for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League — the women’s pro organization that would inspire the 1992 Penny Marshall film “A League of Their Own.” Henschel was 18 at the time.
Donahue was a trailblazer and feminist icon in the 1940s for playing in the women’s baseball league.
At the same time, she and Henschel had to hide their identities from the public as gays and lesbians were scorned by society and lived in the shadows. Also, in the 1950s, the U.S. government started a massive witch hunt to purge gays and lesbians from the federal workforce, which was described in the documentary “The Lavender Scare.”
Secret romance
Donahue and Henschel fell in love shortly after they met and remained inseparable. They moved to Chicago, where they resided for several decades and kept their romance a secret.
During most of their 72-year relationship, Terry Donahue, right, and Pat Henschel, left, told family and co-workers they were good friends and roommates. Eventually, when they were in their 80s, Donahue and Henschel decided to come out of the closet to their family and acknowledge they were a lesbian couple. Photo: Netflix.
“A Secret Love” follows Donahue and Henschel back to when they first met and looks at their professional lives in Chicago. The film also showcases their coming out to their conservative families and debating whether or not they should get married.
As Donahue and Henschel face the hardships of aging and illness and they enter the home stretch, their love proves resilient to last a full nine innings.
