Teresa Valdes Cardenas' Obituary
Teresa V. Cardenas, age 88 of Miami, passed away on Wednesday, October 2, 2024, following a brief illness.
She was born in Santiago, Cuba to the late Ricardo E. and Elva A. Valdés on August 28, 1936. Mrs. Cardenas was a retired employee of Miami-Dade County Water & Sewer. Dynamic, cheerful, vivacious, and a delightful raconteur she felt at home both in social gatherings and while spending time with her beloved family and friends.
When national politics in the land of Christopher Columbus interrupted her studies at the University of Oriente in 1956 it was Teresa's idea that she find a way to continue her education, studying English by traveling to stay with her cousin Rolando and his wife Theresa, in Connecticut.
While in the States and as the political situation continued to deteriorate back home, Teresa began an exhaustive years-long effort seeking help in reuniting her family on American soil. Turned down in her efforts by the offices of Senator Prescott Bush and Senator Thomas Dodd, Teresa finally found a sympathetic ear in the office of New Haven-based Congressman Robert Giaimo and the family would once again be reunited in the Spring of 1961, after which they moved to New York City together.
In late 1963, as Teresa was preparing to leave for a trip to visit Mexico, Haydee Espino (née Bermudez) the wife of a distant cousin Ramon, called up the Valdés house to ask Teresa to come to New Jersey to meet her handsome, 28 year-old, cousin, Antonio "Orencio" Cárdenas. Newly arrived from Cuba, Orencio was an architect who had studied at the University of Havana. Teresa declined. For the entirety of her life, Teresa let very little interfere with her desire to travel. Haydee had implored Teresa to meet him before the trip in order to make an impression and insisted to her that a cadre of girls had already indicated their romantic inclination towards Orencio. Teresa remained steadfast. Nothing would interfere with her planning and departure. It was of no consequence; the coupling was all but inevitable to all observers upon her return.
Lost to memory, is the exact date of their meeting but upon her return, in Autumn of 1963, Teresa would finally meet Orencio at a dinner at the home of Ramon and Haydee. One detail not lost to memory is that Orencio first met Ricardo and Elba on the afternoon of Sunday, November 24th, 1963. In later years, Teresa would delight in recalling the rather macabre detail that it was later that same afternoon in the Valdés living room, gathered around the television, that she, her future husband and her parents witnessed Dallas-area nightclub owner Jack Ruby murder Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of John F. Kennedy the 35th President of the United States, on live television.
On Saturday, the 3rd day of October 1964, amid the tolling of 74-bronze-bells - the heaviest carillon in the world at over 91 metric tons - the couple would marry in an interfaith ceremony—the bride an Episcopalian, the groom a Catholic—at Riverside Church in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The church was built by John D. Rockefeller, richest man in the world at the time of the bride's arrival in the States. At the date of its completion 34 years earlier and until this day, it remains the tallest church in North America.
The couple immediately settled across the Hudson River in New Jersey where within 9 months of the wedding they welcomed their first child. Officially known as Maria, the child was fondly referred to by her mother as Maria-Eugenia owing to Teresa's failing to heed the American tradition of hyphenating two-word given names on a birth certificate, a great regret. Less than three years later, Maria would be followed by a brother Orencio Antonio. Disliking the large difference in climate from their native land, the couple soon had designs on a warmer climate as their future home. By 1972 they departed the Mid-Atlantic for Miami where they raised their family and would remain for the rest of their lives despite Teresa's continuous travel to numerous states, the Canary Islands homeland of a grandfather, mainland Spain homeland of another grandfather, Italy, and France.
She is survived by her husband, Antonio Orencio; daughter, Maria-Eugenia and son-in-law Fernando; son Orencio and daughter-in-law Elizabeth; grandchildren, Joseph, Veronica and Gabriela and grandson-in-law Brandon; sister Angela and brother-in-law Mark, and nephew Kevin.
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