Rhoda Leven Flaxman, who created the Open University of Wellfleet in 2012, died of leukemia on March 10, 2025 at her home in Charlotte, N.C. She was 84.
Rhoda was born on April 4, 1940 in New York, the oldest daughter of Pauline and Irving Leven. The family moved to Providence when Rhoda was 12, and as a freshman at Classical High School she met Allen Flaxman, a senior. They became close friends.
They exchanged letters while he was on a Fulbright in Belgium during medical school and visited on holidays and vacations, but their friendship changed on Sept. 4, 1961. In an unpublished memoir, Rhoda wrote that “the stars exploded” with their first kiss. Allen proposed, and Rhoda accepted.
Raised in a generation of women who first gained broad access to higher education, Rhoda was a proud intellectual and feminist, a voracious reader, and a passionate scholar. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College and then Teachers College at Columbia University.
Rhoda taught high school English and later founded a school named Our House in Philadelphia with author Susan Shreve. After her fourth child was born, Rhoda completed her doctorate at Brown University and went on to teach English at Wheaton College, offering survey courses on British and American literature.
She later joined the faculty at Brown, where for many years she ran the Writing Fellows Program, which matched undergraduate writing tutors with professors in support of classes and seminars in a wide range of majors.
Rhoda enjoyed a busy life in Providence while raising her family in Seekonk. She sang for over 40 years with the sopranos of the Providence Singers and for seven years served as chair of trustees at the Wheeler School, from which all her children graduated. A theater lover, Rhoda also served on the board at Trinity Rep and the Second Story Theater.
Many conversations with Rhoda turned to teaching, writing, and literature, which not only took her to far-off places and introduced her to fascinating characters but also reflected her aspirations and values. Her book Victorian Word-Painting and Narrative: Toward the Blending of Genres (University of Rochester Press, 1982) focused on the painterly aspects of works by Dickens and Tennyson, among other Victorian writers. Rhoda originated the term word-painting to describe the “fusing [of] the narrative, the descriptive, and the dramatic to illustrate the metaphorical journey toward the discovery of self.”
Rhoda loved her students, books, and travel, particularly to Paris, and her fascination with the interplay of nature and the human psyche never faded, drawing her ultimately to Wellfleet, where she had spent summers throughout her life. She retired here in 2002. She and Allen renovated the house Rhoda’s parents had built on Old Wharf Road in South Wellfleet in the 1970s.
Rhoda found inspiration and strength not only in the landscape of the Outer Cape but in its people. Her passion for contributing to its culture and community led her in 2012 to found the Open University of Wellfleet, dedicated to year-round lifelong learning. “Her goal,” Jeanne McNett said, “was to bring together isolated adults interested in discussing ideas. OUW is now in its 13th year, with enrollment of 300 per year, spread over 20 courses.”
Rhoda delighted in recruiting and supporting teachers for the OUW and offered her own courses, including Cape Cod Memoirs, Irish Literature, and Henry James Goes to Paris. These courses “attracted a loyal and devoted following who formed bonds outside of class,” McNett said.
“The Open University connects so many people, folks both hungry to learn and to teach,” said Ira Wood. “She really raised the bar for off-season activities out here.”
Although she was physically away from her home in South Wellfleet at her death, Rhoda’s mind never strayed far from the saltwater tides of Blackfish Creek, the long path to Dyer Pond, the windswept dunes of LeCount Hollow, or the vibrant pinks, purples, and blues of sundown over the marsh outside her house.
She loved to write about Cape Cod, attempting time and again to capture its continually changing canvas: “Often, when the sky was white, the colors went all soft, gray to match the house,” she wrote. “On sunny days the landscape brightened to green, sand, and blue. One could pretend that you were the only one present and that nothing about the land had changed from the time the Pilgrims landed in Provincetown centuries ago.”
For Rhoda, living in such a landscape was the ultimate accomplishment in life. She loved her daily swims in the kettle ponds in Wellfleet and Truro with her friends, children, and grandchildren; long, lively dinners at Moby Dick’s and ice cream at PJ’s; visits to the Wellfleet library to collect piles of books; and watching the sunset from her screened porch overlooking the salt marsh.
Rhoda is survived by her best friend and husband, Dr. B. Allen Flaxman of Charlotte; her children, Cynthia Frank and husband Ted of Charlotte, David Flaxman and wife Alicia of Seekonk, and Jessica Flaxman and husband Jake Sussman of Mamaroneck, N.Y.; her son-in-law, Jonathan Martel of Chevy Chase, Md.; and 11 grandchildren: Madeline, Ben, Hana, Koby, Sophie, Alex, Tessa, Julia, Zachary, Jack, and Lydia.
She was predeceased by her daughter Lisa Flaxman in 2009.
A celebration of Rhoda’s life is planned for Wellfleet this summer.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Rhoda’s memory can be made to the Open University of Wellfleet, the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, or the Local Journalism Project.
