Rachel Zisa

Rachel Zisa, (nee Longo) age 90 of Wayne passed peacefully at home on Thursday, February 18, 2021.

She was born and raised at the family home on Canal Street in Paterson.  When Rachel was a young girl her parents moved to Tennessee where they lived on a three hundred acre farm. The move was an attempt to avoid all the difficulties of the Great Depression.  They enjoyed horses, planting, and hunting at the farm but returned to Paterson as they just couldn’t make a go of it.

Bill frequented the diner where Rachel worked as a teen. After leaving the diner one evening, Rachel started talking to Bill and his friend by Bill’s car. The friend suggested Rachel have a seat in the car.  Once seated, Bill’s friend closed her door and Bill sped off with Rachel aboard. This thinly veiled attraction in more innocent times, some would call kidnapping today, became their first date. They fell in love, married at Saint Agnes RC Church in Paterson on November 25, 1951 and honeymooned for two days at the Hotel Century in New York City. During their honeymoon Bill got two tickets to see Judy Garland perform at the Palace Theatre. The only problem was the seats were very far apart. They enjoyed a marriage of 63 years that was characterized by love, devotion, and family before Bill’s passing in November of 2015.

Rachel’s working life included waitressing at the Colonial Tea Room in Paterson and working at Okonite Cable Factory. After she married Bill and moved to Wayne in 1967,  she found work with the Wayne Board of Education.  She worked for over twenty-five years in the cafeterias of several of the Wayne Schools including AP Terhune, Pines Lake, Wayne Hills and for most of her career, worked at Schuyler Colfax.

Most of all Rachel will be remembered for being a loving wife, devoted mother, and awesome grand and great-grandmother.  She was kind, loving, and generous to a fault. Sunday Italian dinners at her home were a weekly tradition for many years.  Rachel would make the gravy, meatballs, sausage, braciole, and all other kinds of Italian specialties. She would cook enough to feed an army.  She loved playing cards, going to Atlantic City to play the slots, and was very lucky at scratch-off lottery tickets. When their children lived at home, they would take an annual trip to Florida to visit family.  Those Florida trips, by car, bus, train, plane or any combination of those modes of transportation were always an adventure.  When driving to Florida, Rachel would pack a tremendous lunch, including her famous fried chicken and macaroni & meatballs. The children remember an infamous luncheon at the same Virginia picnic table they had always stopped at on their road trips. This particular afternoon, their dad approached a motorcycle gang laying around in the grass.  He asked them to join his family for lunch.  The bikers couldn’t believe it but joined them!!  Rachel still had food to spare! After her husband’s passing Rachel found great comfort in her Christian faith and was a member of the Calvary Gospel Church in Wayne.

Rachel was the loving wife of 63 years to the late William Zisa (d.2015); devoted mother of Carmen Zisa and his wife Beth of St. Cloud, FL, William Zisa and his wife Joanne of Wayne, Anthony Zisa and his wife Nancy of New Castle, CA, and Joseph Zisa and his wife Lisa of Wayne; she was the cherished grandmother of Shannon, Sarah, Greg, Jessica, Alyssa, Billy, Anthony, Nicole, and Joseph; much loved great-grandmother of Colvin, Barrett, Levi, Kaley, Austin, Bianca, Blake, Juliana, Adriana, and AJ; she was the sister of Sally Porter of Clifton, Jimmy King and his wife Joan of Florida, and the late Edna Felix and her late husband Connie.

In lieu of flowers memorial donations to St Jude Childrens Research Hospital would be greatly appreciated.