This article was updated on July 24, 2025.
Everyone in Rudelle Falkenburg’s life knew she was magical.
At Storybook School, the nursery she ran out of her Truro home, Rudelle bent reality just enough to let the impossible in. She transformed her living room into a cardboard castle where children dashed through secret corridors with wooden swords and paper crowns. On another day, the room became a rainforest with papier-mâché monkeys swinging from curtain rods and colorful parrots strung to the ceiling.
The room was Rudelle’s kingdom, one she built and rebuilt over and over again for more than 40 years, to give children a place where imagination could run free.
Rudelle died on July 16, 2025 at her home in Truro after a long battle with bulbar palsy, a neurological condition that impairs motor functions. She was 79.
Rudelle was born on Nov. 29, 1945 in Bristol, R.I. to the late Gabriel A. and Gloria D. Goglia. She graduated with a degree in education in 1969 from Barrington College, where she met her husband, Warren Falkenburg. They married in 1967 and moved to Cape Cod in 1969. The two originally lived in Provincetown, where Rudelle was a Head Start teacher, before purchasing their Truro home in 1977.
It was there that Rudelle created Storybook School, affectionately known as Miss Rudi’s, in her living room. Rudelle’s nursery school and summer arts program delighted and inspired generations of children on the Outer Cape.
Every summer, Rudelle put on extravagant theater productions with her class, adding her own charming touches to retellings of classic children’s stories on a small, handcrafted stage in her back yard. In one show, Snow White pursued a career as a doctor rather than awaiting her Prince Charming. In another, the cast stunned the audience of parents with their performance of Miss Rudi’s take on the “Three Little Pigs” — parts of which were performed in French.
Each play is lovingly documented in albums that line Rudelle’s bookshelves. Her house is a time capsule of the children that passed through her doors.
“Once you’re a Rudelle child, you’re Rudelle’s forever,” said Molly F. Pechukas-Simonian, who attended Rudelle’s school.
Rudelle was acutely aware of the effect she had on the children in her care. On the back of her business card was this: “When you learn something as a young child you hold onto it forever.”
Under Rudelle’s guidance, children learned to act, sing, and paint. But it wasn’t about physical skills. It was that she made each child feel capable — there was never a sense of limitation, never a task too big.
“She had the superpower of making a kid feel seen and understood,” said Kait Blehm, another former student of Rudelle’s.
Rudelle never forgot a child, and they never really left her home. They live on in the scrapbooks she compiled in her rare free time. The pages carry thank-you notes from her students, love letters from Warren, and cutouts from magazines that she found too beautiful or too whimsical to throw away.
The dozens of dollhouses that inhabit Miss Rudi’s are another testament to her boundless imagination. There are tiny teacups with names of her grandchildren, miniature golden frames holding photos of her family members, and dolls that resemble her loved ones down to their signature outfits and hairstyles.
Warren built the dollhouses, and Rudelle brought them to life with her decorations and vivid characters. Despite their intricacy, they weren’t too delicate to play with. Rudelle didn’t believe in keeping beauty behind glass.
“You’d just look at them, stare into the tiny rooms, and press the little button that made the lights flicker on — and suddenly, it was magic,” said K.C. Myers, who sent two children to Rudelle’s nursery school.
Rudelle’s influence stretched far beyond the walls of her school.
Molly, Rudelle’s former student, named her daughter after the woman who defined her childhood. Baby Rudelle met her namesake for the first and last time a few months before Rudelle’s death. As Molly left that day, Rudelle pressed a small basket into her hands — filled with the very toys that Molly had once played with at Storybook School.
Rudelle is survived by her husband, Warren, of Truro; her son Titus Falkenburg and wife Marianne of Syracuse, N.Y.; her son Joshua Falkenburg of South Berwick, Maine; her grandchildren, Nathan, Zacharias, Tyler, Isabella, and Lillian Falkenburg; her brothers, Peter Goglia and wife Virginia, Gabe Goglia and wife Claudia, Victor Goglia and wife Ann, and Pierre Goglia and wife Roselda; her sisters-in-law, Bethellyn Strickland and husband Tom of Eastham, Susan Joy of Mashpee, and Debbie Falkenburg of Maine; and several nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her sister, Rosemary, and her brother-in-law, Paul Falkenburg.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Rudelle’s honor can be made to the Truro Council on Aging or the Truro Public Library.
