Norma Alter
Funeral Service: March 1, 2026 11:30 AM
Funeral Home: Gutterman’s Rockville Centre Chapel
175 N. Long Beach Road,
Rockville Centre, NY 11570
Notes:
Following the chapel service, interment will be held at New Montefiore Cemetery in West Babylon, NY.
Norma Alter died peacefully in her sleep on February 26, 2026. She was 95 years old. Norma was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest child of Ethel and Benjamin Rudikoff. A proud graduate of James Madison High School, she attained a Bachelor’s Degree in Education at New York University and went on to a career in teaching. She could have had any guy she wanted, but chose to marry Lee, whom she met on a weekend retreat at Green Mansions in Warrensburg, NY. Theirs was a 57-year storybook partnership that set the example of a happy marriage for countless nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends. Being the oldest of her generation on both sides of her family, Norma was the heart and soul of her extended family – nothing to her was more important. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of people, places, and relationships and was the bard who family members sought out to learn their roots. She was the loving big sister to brothers Dick, Jeff, and Mike, and was an affectionate and doting mother to Ben. Ben’s wife Jean was the girl she always wanted –Jean was her daughter, never her daughter-in-law. Norma also was the proud Nana of Esther and Eliot and became their confidant as they grew into adulthood. She made lifelong friends in all phases of her life – her childhood summers in Bloomingburg; her stints as a counselor at sleep-away camps; her honeymoon in Bermuda; her first teaching position in New York City; her job as a roving instructor for the Town of Hempstead Bureau of Drugs and Alcohol; her 32 years as a resident of Oceanside, New York; and her 28 years as a resident of Boynton Beach, Florida. She touched so many lives with her insight, her compassion, her wisdom, and her genuineness. The world is a better place thanks to Norma Alter.