Juana “Carrie” Seda

Juana Caridad “Carrie” Seda, age 90, passed Monday, February 15, 2021 at home with the comfort of family by her side.

Carrie, as everyone calls her today, was born in Havana, Cuba and was orphaned by the age of nine.  She came to the United States when she was twenty-five years old and settled in Florida where she earned a living babysitting and as a seamstress.  She eventually moved to New York City where she attended school to become an X-Ray Technician. She started out at the French Hospital in Midtown Manhattan where she forged lifelong friendships with Annie, Teresa and others.  Later on, she worked for private medical practices in New York City. Her skills & experience calibrating X-ray equipment preventing waste of films and preventing undue exposure to patients was highly sought after, even after she retired.  Today’s digital equipment cannot approximate this process.  She always remembered where she came from and participated in the Feast of Our Lady of Charity “Virgen De La Caridad Del Cobre” (Patron Saint of Cuba) and would send money, medicine, and anything else she found out was needed by family in Cuba.

Carrie married Henry Seda in 1964 and they built a home in North Bergen, New Jersey. She was welcoming to the neighbors and their children in North Bergen and the neighborhood kids were welcome to run and play in her yard. She embraced the American traditions of Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.  During her Fourth of July celebrations she would roast an entire pig in the yard. She had no family here in the United States so she made and treated everyone as her family as she was a true mother in her heart. She cared for her Godchildren as well as other children she came in contact with as if they were her own.  She loved fresh strawberries, cheesecake, papaya, chicken wings, Arroz Moro, and fish soup.  She enjoyed cooking, flower gardening, and she enjoyed going to the annual New York Flower Show, the Ballet, and shopping in midtown Manhattan at Macys and B. Altman’s.  She kept up her sewing skills and re-upholstered her own couch and dining room chairs.  Carrie’s husband Henry worked for the MTA and for many years they would go to the dances sponsored by the Hispanic Society of the New York City Transit Authority.

Carrie was the loving wife of fifty-four years to the late Henry Seda (d.2018); cherished aunt of Rene Torres Peralta who is a Chief Engineer with the Cuban Merchant Marine; dearly loved sister-in-law to Stephen and Zoe M. Seda of Wayne; much loved God-Mother of Zoe N. Seda, Jr. and Roderick Scott Seda as well as, niece and nephews April, Marcus, & Stephen, Jr.