Rhoda Ring

Rhoda Ring passed away peacefully at her home in Las Vegas on June 15, 2022, three weeks before her 99th birthday. She led a remarkable and fascinating life, and few people who knew Rhoda would deny she was one of the most beautiful, caring, generous and extraordinary people they had ever met. She was born on July 5, 1923 and grew up on Hackensack, New Jersey, the older daughter of Jack and Fannie Friedman. She attended NYU School of Commerce on a full scholarship, graduating number one in her class and with many scholastic awards. As a fresh ingénue out of college, she landed a job with the prestigious PR impresario, Bert Nevins. Walter Annenberg and his Triangle Publications was a client. At a corporate meeting with Annenberg in 1943, young Rhoda raised her hand as Annenberg was pounding the table looking for new money-makers to add to his empire, and she presented the idea of creating a magazine for teenage girls who had income from war factory work but had no fashion magazine or clothing lines that were made for them. She suggested the name, “Seventeen” as Booth Tarkington’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel’s title had just been reverted into public domain, and she suggested that Annenberg take one of his movie star magazines, “Stardust,” keep its “S,” name it “Seventeen” and create content for the teen girl fashion market. The rest was history. She worked on the Revlon account, another Nevins client. Revlon had just launched the innovative product and marketing idea of pairing nail color with lipstick color. Lipsticks were a relatively new product to the Revlon brand. It was the peak of the war, and “Rosie the Riveter,” was the character who personified women and teenage girls working in the factories manufacturing supplies and armor to support the war. In fact, Rhoda was credited with selling more war bonds than any celebrity as she accompanied Mayor Fiorello La Guardia around New York State to the factories where the women worked. For Revlon, she suggested “Rosy Future,” as a color duo for the factory “Rosies” spelled as “ROSY” which fit better on the label and conveyed a positive future after the war. “Seventeen” magazine became the “fashion bible” for teenage girls during the forties until the 1970’s, and Rhoda developed marketing channels which solidified the teen girls’ lifestyle market. She created a fashion and media brand named “Teen Timers” which she launched with apparel manufacturers for fashion. and created and hosted a nationwide radio program every Saturday morning over WOR Radio named “Teen Timer’s Radio Hour.” Rhoda travelled the country, discovering and interviewing such pop up-and-comers as Sarah Vaughan and Gordon McCrae. She appeared on the cover of “Women’s Wear Daily,” and was featured in many of its articles as the voice of teenage fashion. After her marriage to New Jersey dentist H. Raymond Ring in 1947, Rhoda turned to the interior design of hundreds of homes and professional offices in the New York-New Jersey area which she continued when they moved to Palm Beach, Florida, then to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1997. Rhoda is survived by two daughters, Beth Ring, an attorney in New York City and Pamela Joy Ring, a retail marketing consultant in Las Vegas and the hundreds of lives she touched wherever she went. Funeral and interment will take place on Sunday, June 19, 2022 in Paramus, NJ and a memorial service will take place in Las Vegas at a future date.