Rhoda Nichter, longtime anti-smoking advocate from Plainview, has died

An anti-smoking crusader long before such terms as “secondhand smoke” became part of the lexicon, Plainview’s Rhoda Nichter eventually saw passage of the no-smoking laws she and others fought for in Albany across decades.

“She called the shots,” said her friend Fran Goldman, of Boynton Beach, Florida, a fellow anti-smoking advocate. “She was smart as a whip.”

Nichter, who, according to family, “became president of anything she joined,” died at home on Jan. 30 of heart failure. She was 97.

"Even a few days before she died ... when I spoke to her, her mind was unbelievably sharp,” Goldman said.

Judith Nichter Morris, of Syosset, the younger of Rhoda and her late husband Murray Nichter’s two daughters, described her mother as a “born leader.”

In addition to Morris’ elementary school PTA, Rhoda Nichter’s leadership included heading the local branch of the educational organization Women’s American ORT and a couples club at the Mid-Island Y JCC in Plainview.

“She arranged trips. She had committees that brought in speakers, brought in entertainment, brought in food,” said a longtime friend, couples club member Lee Rosen, of Plainview. “We looked forward to her being president, for many years. Strict? Yes. But she was a wonderful leader.”

Despite her volunteerism, her career as a certified smoking-cessation specialist with St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center in Roslyn and her work as producer-host of health programs for Nassau Community College’s WHPC-FM in Garden City, Nichter “was always there as a mom,” Morris said. “She was even a Brownies cookie mother,” Morris added, referring to a snack-supply parent for the Girl Scouts’ younger division.

But fighting smoking in public places was Nichter's calling. After first volunteering with the organization Action on Smoking & Health, Nichter in 1974 founded the Group Against Smoking Pollution, which eventually grew into a national organization. She conducted quit-smoking programs from 1975 to 2016 at hospitals, worksites, educational institutions and elsewhere, and wrote the books “Yes, I Do Mind If You Smoke!," published in 1978, and “How To Stop Smoking Once and for All,” published in 1980.

In that effort's early days, Nichter was sometimes met with angry responses.

“One morning, my parents came outside and they found somebody had dumped cigarette butts all over the car,” Morris recalled. “Didn't stop her, though.”

Born Rhoda Samlowitz in Brooklyn on June 22, 1926, the youngest of six children of Romanian immigrants Joseph and Celia Samlowitz, she became Rhoda Samuels in the 1930s when her parents Americanized the family name.

At a Christmas party in 1946, while working as assistant to the controller of Consolidated Fabrics in the Empire State Building, she met Murray Nichter, a member of the U.S. Navy during World War II who worked as a CPA for the firm next door. They married on June 26, 1948, and after first living in Far Rockaway, Queens, they moved to Plainview in 1955.

The two were avid international travelers, collecting art and antiques from around the world.

“Her house looked like a museum,” Morris said.

They played bridge and had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. In 2019, Nichter self-published a family history, “The Six Thousand Mile Journey.”

Nichter was predeceased by her husband in 2010. Along with Morris, Nichter is survived by another daughter, Shelli Nichter McWhorter, of Orlando, Florida; and four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

A service was held Feb. 2 at Gutterman’s Funeral Home in Woodbury. Nichter was interred at Mount Ararat Cemetery in Lindenhurst. No memorial is planned, but, said Morris: “At the funeral we had six eulogies.”