Well...I'm glad Les checked this out.  I was able to parent one hand -- after a struggle -- but now for some reason Poser has decided parenting is out.

I also discovered that the hands get very messed up with hidden rotations.  So I created a new hybrid figure in which the inkey goal is a helper object called "wrists" (parented to the forearm).  Now the hands don't get all crunched up as I move the prop around.

Going to restart Poser before I give up on parenting in the Hierachy editor.  It worked once.  For whatever reason it doesn't work now...