Obituary of Rebecca F. Rikleen

Rebecca Frank Rikleen, formerly of New York City, age 100, entered into rest on March 13, 2024. She was a wonderful writer, artist and poet, and friend to most everyone who met her. A fiercely independent woman, until recently Rebecca had lived by herself in the same apartment in New York City where she had resided since 1951.

Rebecca was born on October 31, 1923 in Narragansett Bay on the boat that carried her parents who were fleeing Russia. Because she was born in American waters, she was automatically an American citizen. That her parents were able to disembark on American soil with their infant was likely due to a decision of their boat captain who, aware that the United States was close to reaching its annual quota on Russian immigrants, rerouted his ship to Providence, thereby avoiding the larger queue of vessels waiting at Ellis Island in New York City. Had he instead waited his turn in New York waters, the annual quota may have been reached before they landed and the newborn and her parents would have been denied entry and sent back to Russia.

Rebecca spent her childhood in Philadelphia where her mother worked in a sweatshop and her father sold insurance. In 1939, her parents purchased and reopened Hillcrest, a shuttered hotel north of Livingston Manor, NY, and she graduated from Livingston Manor High School in 1940. Her grades propelled her to the top of her class, but she was told by the principal that the honor of being valedictorian should fall to the No. 2 student who had grown up in the town.

Subsequently, Rebecca obtained the highest score in the county on a statewide exam – an achievement that brought her an automatic acceptance into Cornell University. Her parents dismissed the idea without even exploring whether scholarship support was possible. Not to be deterred, Rebecca later convinced the Admissions Department at Temple University to accept her, subsequently earning a B.A. as a commuter student. Some two decades later, she received a Masters Degree in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, followed by a Masters Degree in Early Childhood Education from the Bank Street School of Graduate Education.

Rebecca was a founding parent of, and later long-time director of the Red Balloon Nursery School and Day Care Center in a building owned by Columbia University. Throughout her years of working and raising her 4 children, Rebecca always found joy and comfort in her many artistic projects. After retiring, she remained quite active, initially traveling with longtime companion Herbert Thorne, and later taking art and writing classes all over New York City.

Rebecca met her beloved husband, the late Alexander Sander Rikleen, at the New York Museum of Modern Art. She was the devoted mother of: Sander Rikleen and his wife Lauren Stiller Rikleen; Daniel A.S. Rikleen and his wife Kris Lobo; Annie Bachman and her husband John Bachman; and Ethan Y. Rikleen and his wife Rachel Spitzer Rikleen. She was a loving sister to Donald William Frank and the late George Frank, and the cherished grandmother to: Alex Rikleen and his spouse Leslie; Ilyse and her spouse Sam Herman; Sarah Rikleen; the late Zuben Rikleen; Rebecca Bachman; Emily Bachman and her spouse Caroline Lange; Clara Rikleen; and Asher Rikleen. She was also the revered great-grandmother to Joseph Rikleen, Elias Rikleen, and Eliana Herman.

Services were held at Colonial-Bryant Funeral Home, 29 Pearl Street, Livingston Manor, New York, 12758 on Sunday, March 17, 2024, with burial in Livingston Manor’s Agudas Achim Cemetery, next to her husband Alexander, and near her parents Daniel and Mary Frank.
A Celebration of Life for Rebecca will be held on Friday, April 19 at 4 PM at the Morningside Gardens Community Center, 100 LaSalle Street, New York, NY, 10027.

To honor Rebecca Rikleen’s memory, please consider making a donation to the following New York organizations which supported her creative interests in recent years:
Teachers & Writers Collaborative (https://twc.org), PO Box 1208, New York, NY 10113 or to Dances For A Variable Population, Inc. (https://dvpny.org), 560 Riverside Drive 9K, New York, NY 10027.

Arrangements under the care of Colonial-Bryant Funeral Home, for further information call 845-439-4333 or visit www.colonialfamilyfuneralhomes.com