Neighbors: Jill Ross

Jill Ross is a born performer. The daughter of two entertainers, she got her first taste of the arts when she landed a lead role in a New Haven, Conn., community-theater production at the young age of 8. She never looked back.

Ross went on to study theater in college, earning a B.A. in musical theater from Stephens College, in Columbia, Mo., where she also developed an interest in puppetry. When it came time for Ross to pursue an internship, she aimed high: She wanted to study under Jim Henson, famed creator of The Muppets.

“He was filming ‘Sesame Street’ in New York, so I decided to just call him,” she says. “All he could do was say no.”

Luckily for Ross, Henson said yes, and she went off to learn from some of the most iconic names since fur hit film, including Jim Henson, Frank Oz and the rest of the crew on the set of “Sesame Street.”

“It was incredible,” she says. “(Henson) was really generous, kind and soft-spoken, but when he put on his puppets, it was like his alter-ego.”

Henson and Oz let Ross in on some tricks of the puppetry trade, including the ins and outs of puppet construction, puppet-handling techniques and the importance of the eyes and mouth in conveying emotion.

Ross took what she learned and started her own career. Using Henson’s techniques, she created her first puppet: a red-haired, mustachioed baritone named Jerry, which she often took out in public to entertain strangers. She and a partner spent the next seven years touring New England with their own musical puppet production for children — sometimes performing for audiences as large as 1,000.

When Ross met her future husband, Arnie, a fellow showman with his own impressive résumé, the two quickly fell in love, and Ross decided she wanted to live a more ordinary life and find another use for her skills. She went back to college to earn an M.S. in therapeutic recreation and gerontology.

While volunteering in a nursing home, she found a way to use her talents to connect with the patients. She crafted a doctor puppet, quickly dubbed Dr. Fraud, and with the help of her new sidekick, she found that even the most closed-off patients would open up to her.

“They loved it,” she says. “As soon as I put the puppet on, they forgot all about me, and they would open up to Dr. Fraud. It’s amazing the effect puppets have on people.”

Today, as the director of the Sarasota Bay Club’s Masterpiece Living program, Ross organizes creative ways to allow the residents to continue to learn and be challenged, which studies show is highly beneficial for long-term senior health. For Ross, her position is a perfect culmination of all her interests and years of training.

“I get such a joyful feeling when I see the changes it makes in their lives,” she says. “This isn’t even a job to me. I get to use my love of the arts to help people — what could be better?”