Rhoda Miller passed away on July 12, 2024, after a long and charmed life of almost 93 years. A long-time Concord resident, Rhoda was fun and feisty, loving and kind. She enjoyed complimenting strangers on their outfits and was particularly fond of hats. Her style was generally colorful and boho chic and her wardrobe was an eclectic mix of artisan treasures and thrift store finds.
Rhoda graduated from Brookline High in 1949 and went on to Mass College of Art for a bachelor’s degree in art education. After graduation, she took a short tour of Europe before starting work as an art teacher back home. In 1955 she married Stanley Miller, a Harvard Business School teacher with whom she shared an appreciation for classical music and contemporary art. In 1958 they moved to a brand-new house in the Peacock Farm neighborhood in Lexington, where their young daughter Sydney and son JB had a built-in posse for snowball fights, swimming lessons, and the children’s art classes Rhoda gave in their home. The family spent 1961 in Japan where Stan taught at the Keio Business School and they started a life-long appreciation for sushi, ceramics, and Japanese prints.
After returning to Lexington for several years, the Millers moved to London in 1965, and Stan enjoyed visiting many stately homes, cathedrals, and museums while traveling the Continent for business presentations and meetings. Meanwhile, Rhoda was immersed in the culture of London’s swinging 60s and embraced many of the fashion trends on display nearby on Kings Road (Mary Quant, miniskirts, gogo boots, Liberty scarves, and long Laura Ashley dresses) and decorated the Millers’ townhouse with William Morris wallpaper and curtains. Rhoda forged friendships with several expat American women and together they enjoyed the latest theater and art exhibits, took many language and literature classes, including with Jean Wilson Woolf, niece of Virginia Woolf, and gave lavish dinner parties in their homes. A musical evening with a string quartet and rented gold chairs was a particular high point at the Millers’.
In 1970, the Millers welcomed their third child, son Asher, born at Westminster Hospital in London. The family returned to the U.S. in 1973 and discovered the antique charms of Concord, where they bought a red former Victorian schoolhouse with sloping floors and small rooms on Monument Street, just steps from the Colonial Inn and a ‘penny’ candy store. Their dog Peggy made an excellent adjustment from city life to walks at the Old North Bridge and Hapgood Forest.
Rhoda soon applied her artistic skills to kitchen design and completed training to become a certified kitchen designer. She continued to carry a tape measure conveniently in her handbag for most of the next several decades. After years of designing other people’s kitchens, she eventually addressed her own home and produced a stunning room that quickly became the focus for large Thanksgiving meals and many dinners with family and friends, who enjoyed Rhoda’s creative cooking, elegant table centerpieces, and many informal outdoor potluck meals and meetings.
Both older children moved away for college in the late 1970s, leaving Rhoda, Stan, and youngest son Asher to build their community ties in Concord. Asher’s friends introduced them to the First Parish Unitarian Universalist congregation in Concord, where Rhoda soon became a popular chaperone for the youth group’s programs, including overnight sleepaways in various drafty New England churches in the mid-late 1980s.
From the early 1990s, Rhoda’s happy place was the First Parish kitchen, where she organized seders, memorial receptions, Women’s Parish Association (WPA) luncheons, Funderburg Scholar dinners, and many other events. She identified as a ‘UU UnGodly’ to the end of her life and enjoyed monthly gatherings with the Humanists, the Jewish Awareness Group, First Tuesday group, and her multi-generational FP Extended Family. She served on several important committees and boards, studied Margaret Fuller and the Transcendentalists, and traveled to Europe several times with lively First Parish groups and with Asher and Julie for cooking trips in the early 2010s. In her later years, Rhoda enjoyed weekly lunches at the Concord Council on Aging and late-night classical movie double features when her son JB visited.
In 2000, empty-nesters Rhoda and Stan downsized from Monument Street to a ground-floor corner unit at Concord Greene, which Rhoda carefully renovated to include extra storage and display space for their extensive collections of books, prints, ceramics, and tablecloths. After Stan died in early 2003, Rhoda continued to enjoy the condo’s lovely pond views and monitored the squirrels, chipmunks, cardinals, and many generations of Canada geese. Her 90th birthday was celebrated on a hot summer day in 2021 with cupcakes and clowns in the condo parking lot. It was a very happy reunion with many close friends and neighbors seeing each other after COVID separation and Rhoda questioned whether she was turning 100 because of all the fuss!
Rhoda moved to assisted living at Concord Park after 2022 and enjoyed her brief time there with tasty meals in a sunny dining room, flower-arranging in the cafe, and naps in her own special unit, which Syd and Ira thoughtfully set up to include her favorite ceramics and art. After more than 50 years in Concord, she finally left town to be closer to her daughter Sydney and more support earlier this year. However, even as she felt her world shrinking around her, Rhoda maintained a warm and loving sense of connection to her Concord community and greatly appreciated the messages that got through by phone or emails relayed by Sydney, and several recent greeting cards and drawings from her grandchildren.
The family is very grateful to Concord’s ‘Handsome Firemen’ who picked Rhoda up off the floor countless times over many years and provided several rides to Emerson Hospital. Rhoda’s primary care doctor, specialists, visiting nurses, PT and OT experts, aides, cooks, cleaners, delivery drivers, and friends made her independence possible, especially in recent years. She may not have remembered every name, but she absolutely appreciated every bit of assistance she received, whether large or small.
Rhoda was predeceased by her husband Stan more than 20 years ago and by her older sister Bernice ‘Bunny’ Hartstone in 2018. She is survived by her younger sister Sandra Hoffman Haight, many loving nieces and nephews, and her three children: sons JB in London (with Chloe Emmerson and their son Theo and daughter Genevieve) and Asher in Portland, Oregon (Julie Mumford and daughters Adeline and Rosalind); and Rhoda’s daughter Sydney and son-in-law Ira Heller in Dorchester.
A celebration of life will be held in the fall.
In lieu of flowers, the family encourages you to compliment someone on their outfit, reach out to a stranger, and connect with your people!
Arrangements are entrusted to Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service. To share a remembrance in Rhoda’s online guestbook, visit www.DeeFuneralHome.com.
