Rhoda N. Cahan

I am so sorry to hear of Rhoda's passing. She was my mentor at CGS where I worked for her for 10 years. We had our differences, but also complemented each other. Her ability with numbers was absolutely amazing. She had an almost photographic memory. Rhoda had trouble writing proposals and valued me as her "wordsmith" which she called me all the time. So I would write all of our proposals for IT Training business. I would then submit the proposal to her and she would spellcheck it by reading it backwards! She taught me more about grammar and punctuation than I ever knew existed! It could have been a 200 page proposal, yet she would check every word and mark it up for me to correct. As I said, we complemented each other.

We once attended a meeting of IT Traininng Managers called MetroSET. About 70 people in the audience. The speaker gave everyone in the room a test. I think it was Briggs Meyers. She read about everyday 35 words in 1 minute to the class and we had to then take out some paper and write down all of the words we could remember. We were given a few minutes to do this. After the time limit, the speaker asked us to raise our hands according to how many we were able to remember. She started with did you get one right? If not, put your hand down. Then then two, three, ... then progressed to about 20, where half the room started to put their hands down. As she kept counting, hands kept going down, except for a select few. Rhoda and I were both still in the game. The speaker got to 33, where I had to finally lower my hand. Rhoda's was still up ... she remembered 34 out of 35!!!! It was pretty amazing. I was proud of her, but that's not the fun part of the story ... About six months later, we were on a Circleline cruise around Manhattan with the speaker from the meeting. Rhoda claimed something was really bothering her. She made her way to the speaker and I followed. When she got there, she reintroduced herself and then named every single test word that was mentioned in our earlier meeting ... in the exact order that they were originally presented!!!! Who does that??? Rhoda does!

So my friend, the grammar here wasn't perfect but it's better than if I had never met you. :) Rest well and know that you will always have my admiration. You made a big difference in my life.

Rhoda will always have a place in my heart. I met her three years ago at Dance for PD where she always wore vibrant colored matching outfits. And she danced with enthusiasm.

Last year she began coming to Ping Pong Parkinson’s when her Parkinson’s symptoms worsened as she was battling leukemia. She was coping with side effects of her treatment but soldiered on. Yet she remained clear headed and choose to simplify her and Sam’s life by moving to FL.

But she took the time to help me come back to the piano by giving me some easy to play pieces.

Rhoda had a zest for life. She was and is an inspiration for me to live a full and active life. And now I know that she and I share a birthday - 6 years apart! No wonder we connected
Fondly,
Julia

She was such a kind and caring person. Loved when we would all get together…..

Rhoda was an extraordinary woman and friend. She would come to our Mississippi home and farm brimming with joy, enthusiasm, fun, kindness and generosity! We loved her!
She saw the value and worth of those around her. She encouraged the budding gifts and talents of our children. Rhoda would tirelessly sit at the piano playing duets with each of our children, accompanying piano, violin, flute, guitar, mandolin, voice and even banjo.
We had much fun riding horses with her, picking blueberries, cooking together, playing games, engaging in deep intellectual converations, laughing, loving, making wonderful memories.
Rhoda was the pianist for our eldest daughter's wedding. Melanie came as well, and blessed us with her skillful makeup artistry. So much joy and fun!
Rhoda and Sam invited me to visit them in their NYC apartment shortly after my husband's death. They were so kind and supportive. About 10 years later I visited them in their Florida condo. By then Rhoda was bravely battling Parkinson's. However, we had a lot of fun with two hours of water aerobics and exercise daily. She was quite brave and always positive. Rhoda planned a surprise birthday party for me at an impressive restaurant--and my birthday was four months away! She and Sam wanted me to experience the unique way this restaurant honored and celebrated special occasions. It was hilariously fun!
Our whole family grieves with you all. What an amazing woman she was, What a legacy she left you! Our lives were greatly touched and impacted by hers. We are grateful to have had her friendship and love. The world is a better place because of her!

Rhoda was a close and dear friend to my mother, Denise Dailey, for over 50 years, so I had the privilege of growing up Rhoda-adjacent for most of my life. I have always been inspired by her brilliance, resilience, musical and artistic talents, humility, kindness, inclusiveness and generosity, and always by how she loved her family. She was a rare adult who treated me as a peer and saw me as valued and trusted, although a generation separated us. I’m profoundly thankful to have known Rhoda, and send my love and deepest sympathies to Sam, Melanie, Eric, Adam and family. May her memory be a blessing.

Rhoda was a dear friend to my mother and a remarkable host to our family when we would visit the Cahans in the city. I will remember fondly the love she showed for her children and her tolerance for the mayhem we would create in their elegant home. Love to Sam, Melanie, Adam, and Eric XOXO

I will always know you as Grandma Rhoda. Your love, patience, kindness (my god are you kind) and sense of humor were a delight to be around. You taught both your girls, and me, how to be grateful for each moment however it comes. To have the courage to face challenges with unbelievable grace. To be interested and engaged in all that this life has to offer.

My fondest memories together were watching you play the piano with your grandkids listening, little Alaska barely tall enough to see the keys. I also loved our cooking competitions, you were both a fair judge and engaging participant. Lastly, who could forget Sam's jokes! You were always down for a laugh. I admire this so much about you.

You were always interested and interesting. I so enjoyed the tender moments we shared: learning about the meaning of family, making art joy not judgment, and remembering to see the people in the room. Thank you Rhoda for all your gifts, love and care. I will carry them with me in my heart forever.

<3 Love Tara

Rhoda was a treasured friend. I met her when we started 6th grade together. We became friends when my father, her parents’ accountant, introduced us as we were both starting a new school and didn’t know any other kids yet. The first time I went to her house to meet her, I brought her a red nylon jacket as a present ( my parents’ idea) and she was so excited, she wore it every day for an entire year.
I was kind of afraid of her parents because they were both older than my parents and had really important jobs. I also learned that Rhoda had (step) brothers who were as old as my parents and I could never figure that out. Rhoda’s mom, who ran a steel company, was actually a really a fun person. She and Rhoda loved to play tricks on each other and often I was with them when they did. I was with Rhoda and her mom one time when Rhoda locked her mom in a bathroom stall. We laughed and laughed, thinking it was so funny, but darn it, her mom outsmarted us, crawled into the neighboring stall and walked out the open door. We could never understand how she did that!
Rhoda was always the smartest kid in the class, but always very modest. She loved to do things, like practice the piano, things most of us tried to avoid. She lived in a house with an incredible basement set-up, so we loved to go there to play. In middle school, three of us girls even got some silly boys to take dancing lessons with us in that amazing basement!
Starting in middle school we began to amass a group of girlfriends. We had so much fun together all throughout our school years that we are still a group of girls, 82-83 years old, now living all throughout the country, who get together regularly on a face-time zoom call every 6 wks! What a treasure. Actually, if it weren’t for Rhoda, who was the only one able to figure out how to initiate these calls, we would never have been able to do this. She was definitely our genius.
Rhoda was extremely generous and aways invited my husband Sam and me to stay in her apartment in New York when we visited there. Rhoda knew I was terrified of any creatures that crawled, even tiny ones. After spending a few nights there in one of her kids’ rooms, she asked me how I slept. I said everything was great. But then she announced she had to feed the iguana. Iguana? What iguana?? She immediately went into the room where we had been sleeping and pulled the sheet off a huge cage sitting on the dresser in the room. Underneath was a huge iguana in a cage. I nearly fainted. Of course, Rhoda, knowing the iguana was harmless, told me it had been there all along, but guessed I just hadn’t noticed it.
Rhoda’s exceptional qualities were so numerous, it is hard to state them all. She was always generous, fun-loving, brilliant, talented and loyal. Life threw her many curve balls, but she always tried to meet each challenge with tolerance, persistence, and optimism. She always gave far more than she ever took. She was an adoring mother, stepmother, grandmother, wife and friend. When she had to make hard choices, and there were many, she took them on. Her courage, perserverance and acceptance were admirable.
I shall always remember her as a great inspiration and a loving friend. May her memory be a blessing and may she rest in peace.

Linda Winn

I met Rhoda in 1998 when I started working at Morgan Stanley. She began as a vendor for training services and quickly became a dear friend. Rhoda was always generous—first through our work lunches, and then more personally as she supported me through so many life moments: marriage, becoming a mother, and my move from NYC to Raleigh.

Nineteen years ago, we traveled together to South Africa—a remarkable trip I’ll never forget. At one point, as I was falling in love with Dan (now my husband), she asked, “Do you wish you were here with Dan?” I didn’t hesitate. I was grateful to be there with her. Everything about that trip was magical, and in her honor, Dan and I plan to return to South Africa.

We met 27 years ago, with 27 years between us in age, yet our connection was effortless. Even after I moved to Raleigh in 2015, Rhoda and I kept in touch—always around our birthdays—and she often reached out when someone was considering a move to Raleigh. She was the ultimate connector, and one of those special connections was her niece, Stacy Rudnick.

I was grateful to see Rhoda and Sam again in 2024 at Leah’s bat mitzvah. I’m sharing two photos: one from our South Africa trip in 2007, and one from our reunion in Raleigh in spring 2024.

Rhoda was a treasured friend and mentor. Her mind was sharp, her heart generous, and her smile always radiant. Classy, determined, and endlessly kind. Rest easy, Rhoda—you gave so much love to us all.

My father Leon and Rhoda were first cousins. Harry was my great Uncle, as the brother to my grandfather William.
My first memory of Rhoda I was around ten years old and she came to visit our home and go to the beach. Perhaps this was around 1965?
Not long after, and I can not remember why, a huge stuffed panda bear arrived for me. It was, and will remain, a pivotal memory in my childhood because it brought me so much joy! I named the panda Doroha, after Dorothy, Rhoda and Harry. Daroha was an important friend, but did not survive my ill conceived plan to wash him by hosing him down outside. Daroha did live on. Many years later, I bought an enormous panda for my children when they were little, and he lives in my house today, enjoyed by my grandsons.
The last time I saw Rhoda, we talked about my childhood memories of our day at the beach together making sand castles.

Rhoda was unique. I think of her as fearless, though maybe it was the way she faced life's challenges with grace and goodness.
Thank you for this opportunity to remember Rhoda, and share together.
My thoughts and prayers are with you all in your time of grief and loss.

Rhoda, I’ve been thinking about all the years of friendship we’ve shared — all the chapters that have made up our story.

We met our very first week at Brown. We worked on French and math together, figuring out college and life side by side.

Years later, when we were married, you organized a “musicale” at your apartment — Bob and I playing four-hand piano, Al on violin, Adrienne at the piano. It was such a joyful, creative night — so you.

You gave Bob a wonderful 40th birthday party. Then came our skiing adventures — staying at the Alta Lodge, where we found out that Tabitha Apple had been born.

When our skiing days wound down, we traded snow for beauty of a different kind. We went to the Ahwahnee Lodge in Yosemite one February — snow blanketing the ground, everything peaceful and quiet. The next year we explored Death Valley and stayed at the Furnace Creek Inn. The food there was so expensive that we climbed up on the roof and ate pizza instead — laughing the whole time. Then we went to a lovely resort in Palm Desert, near Joshua Tree National Park.

We loved taking World Politics together and meeting for lunch every week.

Covid made things harder, with distance and travel. But you and Sam had your wonderful winter place in Boca Raton, and we were in Santa Barbara — and we started our weekly Zoom calls. We kept up with each other’s lives that way, and those calls have lasted all the way to today.

So many memories, Rho — decades of friendship, laughter, music, adventures, and love.

My message to Rhoda, her beloved Sam, her extraordinary kids, whose we knew since birth (and all who followed) is one of shared grief over her physical passing, but also of total gratitude, education and remembered laughter: at the first Seder our family attended when our three kids were still small, too; at my first seating at a computer "First you have to boot it." Could she possibly have meant 'kick it'?; for the gentle hilarity of co-teaching music classes at Diller-Quaile where she could play any piece put in front of her and schedule a morass of classes with the same ease Melanie referred to in Rhoda's guessing jelly bean numbers; for her adaptability and inventiveness over each of her children's specific likes and needs (again perfectly put by Melanie); for her dazzling smile and selflessness. Rhoda lives on in all these recollections and deeds. Thank you, Rho.

In college, I tried to explain my mom to my boyfriend before she visited—her genius, her number-powers, her whole unique way of walking through the world. I just couldn't seem to explain it.
Then came a knock at the door.
She stood there with a beaming smile, holding a huge fuzzy creature that looked like it broke out of an arcade. Zero percent her style.
“Mom… what is that?” I asked.
She explained how her office ran a holiday contest: guess the number of jellybeans in a jar and cherries on a massive wall poster. Most people made guesses.
She built a NASA-adjacent calculation system.
Scaling equations. Probabilities. Volume estimates. A light afternoon of candy physics.
She explained it casually, like "this is how I brushed my teeth"
My boyfriend just stared. She was doing my job for me.
In the end, she missed the correct total by one.
She happily handed me this huge fuzzy creature.
I turned to my boyfriend and said:
“Brian… meet Rain-Mom.”

A Mother's Patience:

Children can get way too picky when it comes to being fed.
Here's some of what we put Rhoda through:

Adam spent an entire summer insisting that he would only eat foods which would be placed on his finger tips. That meant she had to order, or always have, plates of raspberries or olives.

Eric was the most reasonable, but demanded too much apple juice until his teeth were affected. He developed so many cavities, that when they were filled caused him pain.

I repeatedly decided that our kitchen wall was my perfect canvas for entire bowls of creamed spinach. Later, in an epic battle of wills, I insisted on eating with only one chop stick, spearing all my food. Which essentially, I couldn’t do.

She met our ridiculous demands with a patience, acceptance and a gracefulness that we are only beginning to understand.

Top Of Europe:
The Jungfraujoch sits between two peaks in the Swiss Alps. Thin air, stunning ice palace, and the highest railway station on the whole continent.
We went up as a family.
My father, Amos, an avid photographer had a thing about “lighting”. He had wandered off to chase the sunset and ice through his lenses, before the last Swiss train down the mountain.
Which left Rhoda with a hero’s mission: keep that train from leaving without him. The Swiss don't joke about trains being on time. It’s like a national religion. The conductors insisted Amos would be perfectly fine spending the night up there—thin air, freezing temps, no jacket, no shelter. Rhoda disagreed.
And when motivated, Rhoda was unstoppable.
She got to work:
She told stories. She cried. She fake-cried. She fake-cried better. She sang them songs from The Sound of Music. She talked the conductors into emotional exhaustion. At one point, she was just performing a one-woman show up there.
Meanwhile, Amos was blissfully far off photographing the Aletsch Glacier, unaware she was outsmarting a national rail system on his behalf.
He was gone for over an hour. The train waited.
Not for him—but for her: her determination, her devotion, and her refusal to let a timetable defeat her. She’d beaten Swiss punctuality.
Amos finally stepped onto the train; content, camera full and completely unaware that Rhoda had just held an entire mountain still for him.