Jean Dimmit Sedar is a resident at The Farmstead at Medford who celebrated her birthday with family on July 12.
With festive “100” glasses, family, friends and neighbors of Jean Dimmit Sedar celebrated as she turned 100 years young.
Her children, Emily and Warren, reflected on their mom, who was also wearing a “100 and fabulous” sash that acknowledged her childhood on an Iowa farm, where she walked a mile-and-a-half to a one-room schoolhouse and fell in love with music and travel.
The Haddonfield Symphony – now Symphony in C – was a big part of Sedar’s life, as were string quartets. She played violin in the symphony and also took up viola and guitar. Members of the symphony were on hand to help her celebrate her big milestone on July 12 at The Farmstead at Medford, her home since April.
Sedar, who officially turned 100 on July 13, previously lived independently in Cherry Hil, even through a stroke in 1994, rehabilitation and COVID, Emily shared. Warren, who traveled from San Francisco, toasted his mother at the celebration.
Sedar graduated high school at just 16, went on to Central College in Iowa, and later earned both a master’s and a Ph.D. in biology at a time when few women were even working in science, let alone pursuing doctorates.
“While in graduate school, she met and fell in love with Albert Sedar,” Warren recounted. “They married, had four children, and eventually settled in Barclay Farms, Cherry Hill, where she raised a family without the internet (just imagine that) and lived through more change in one lifetime than most of us can even imagine.
“Through it all, she’s remained steady, kind, funny – and always unapologetically herself.”
Warren also provided personal reflections.
“I’ve always admired her loyalty to my dad,” Warren noted. “He was an avid sailor, and I remember Mom joining him out on the Chesapeake Bay in a tipping sailboat, and she didn’t even know how to swim. She filled our home with music, always practicing the violin, viola or guitar.
“She also had a sharp mind,” he added, “doing crosswords only in pen, especially the Sunday New York Times puzzles. She loved gardening with Dad and was active in a local horticultural society.
“She’s always been fiercely independent,” Warren related. “At 88, she went ziplining in Costa Rica. She was still driving until 95, and just yesterday, she was in the car giving me driving directions: ‘Watch your speed, come to a complete stop.’ She’s basically Siri, but better.
“She still questions my cooking, still refuses to let anyone else pay for dinner and maybe, just maybe, now that she’s 100, she’s starting to let us help … a little.”
