Sarita Wolff Cordell, 97 years, of New Brunswick, New Jersey

.  Born July 16, 1926, passed away December 19, 2023.  She was the first child of Harry Wolff and Kerna Sperling.  Sister of Lee and Helen, Wife of Joseph T. Cordell, and Mother of Anne and Joseph Jr. (Rusty).

Sarita Wolff Cordell was a feminist, a rebel, and an odd duck with an iron core.  She was parsimonious yet generous, ferociously independent yet gregarious.

She was adventurous and liked to travel – Europe, Japan, China, Cambodia, Thailand, Mexico, Central and South America, and Africa. ​She joined the army as a teenager and was stationed in Vienna, Austria ​for a few years after WWII. She lived in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, rural PA, and London (after her children fledged). She did 2 stints in the Peace Corps after retirement (Nepal and the Philippines). She lived in ​the San Francisco​ Bay area for a good run, and lastly, came to New Jersey ​for her denouement. ​

She loved teaching, books, crossword puzzles, Scrabble, chamber music, art, hiking, and good food and drink. She made and kept many good friends. She was proper but also unconventional: her wedding photos show her in a tailored white suit, not a wedding gown, and for her honeymoon, she and her new husband Joe rode from Boston to New Orleans on a motorcycle. She joined groups – women's groups, book clubs, neighborhood groups, and PFLAG, to name a few. She also broke with groups - during the bitter 2-month NYC teachers' strike in 1968 against community control, she was one of a ​few radical teachers to break the lines and reopen the schools along with the anti-racist students. She demonstrated against the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. She marched for civil rights and women's rights. She hated the GOP and supported organizations like the ACLU and the American Humanist Association. She was a devout progressive: she blamed religion for the world's evils.

She outlived her husband, her son, and her two younger sisters Lee Aronson and Helen Cravis, and is survived by Anne and Howie Swerdloff, her grandchildren Samantha and Alexandra Swerdloff, and great-grandchildren, Leo and James Burke-Swerdloff.

We miss her.