Sergio Anthony Esperdy, Jr. was born in Tampa, Florida, on June 18th, 1929; he died in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, on August 27th, 2025. In between those two dates were 96 years of a life well-lived. Educated by Jesuits, who shaped his worldview, Sergio graduated from Tampa’s Jesuit High School in 1947 and from Fordham University in the Bronx in 1951. Upon graduation, he joined the U.S. Army and, after completing Infantry Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was commissioned a second lieutenant, eventually rising to the rank of captain. Sergio served in Korea towards the end of that conflict, seeing combat as a member of the 45th and 3rd Infantry Divisions. He returned to the United States and attended Ranger School in Georgia before taking up a post as Basic Training Company Commander at Fort Dix in New Jersey. Later, as a member of the Florida National Guard, he led a Special Forces division that earned him the “green beret” moniker he carried with pride for the rest of his life. 

While stationed in New Jersey, like so many soldiers before him and since, Sergio went “down the shore” for some R+R. In July 1955 on a beach in Ocean City, he met a Philadelphia high school sophomore named Theresa Zambelli. They wed three years later and were happily married for nearly 67 years. During their courtship, Sergio entered the employee training program of the Insurance Company of North America. He stayed with INA (later Cigna) for thirty years, retiring in 1987 as a Senior Executive Vice President after a career that took him (and his family) to Tampa, Miami, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New York City. 

While his retirement was filled with happy hours of playing tennis and listening to opera, Sergio also dedicated himself to working in his parish and spent several gratifying years heading up the finance committee of Our Mother of Consolation Church. Sergio was a family man in the best sense: madly in love with his wife and devoted to his three daughters, whom he raised to be as independent and confident as he was himself. During the years he and Theresa called Chestnut Hill home, from 1974 to 2016, Sergio loved walking down the hill from the house and hiking in the Wissahickon, and he always marveled that such serene woodlands could exist in the middle of a major metropolis. After he and Theresa moved to the Hill at Whitemarsh, he enjoyed walking the community’s varied paths alongside farm fields and meadows. 

Sergio read widely, especially biographies and histories, but also Faulkner’s novels and Shakespeare’s sonnets (many of which he knew by heart), and he devoured the New York Times daily until the very end of his life. Unsurprisingly, he was a splendid conversationalist, presiding over cocktails and dinner with wit and aplomb. Sergio reveled in his Basque and Cuban heritage and enjoyed sharing stories of visiting Havana as a boy. He loved well-aged bourbon, well-rolled cigars, and well-cut suits. He also loved our deeply flawed country and remained ever hopeful that someday we would finally learn to listen to the better angels of our nature. Patriot, feminist, liberal, man of faith, father, husband, Sergio Esperdy is survived by his wife Theresa Z. Esperdy, his daughters Thérèse, Michelle, and Gabrielle Esperdy, and his grandson Serge Neborak.