Introducing Faces of Kearny
Faces of Kearny, a new monthly feature from Kearny Life, will introduce readers to the people who help shape our community through their work, service, culture and personal stories. Each month, we’ll share another face — and another story worth knowing. We begin the series during Hispanic Heritage Month by highlighting Hispanic residents whose experiences and contributions reflect the diversity of Kearny.
By Marisol Joven
During Hispanic Heritage Month, it is easy to celebrate culture through food, music, traditions, and festivals. But culture is also found in the stories of the families who live beside us, the families who arrived with hopes for a better future, the children who grew up between cultures, and the neighbors who helped make a new place feel like home.
For Orlando Miranda, whose family is from Peru, that story began when his family arrived in Kearny in 1981. He came to the United States as a child, not speaking English. When he thinks about those early years, he remembers more than growing up in a new country. He remembers the people who made Kearny feel like home.
“Kearny welcomed my family to America in 1981. I grew up in Kearny, and when I think about those early years, I do not simply remember streets, schools, or buildings. I remember people. I remember a community.” That sense of belonging has stayed with him throughout his life.
“My Hispanic heritage is the heartbeat of who I am,” Orlando says. “It is the language my family speaks, the traditions that shaped me, the sacrifices of those who came before me.”
Today, Orlando has transformed those sacrifices into a life of service. He is the Hudson County Undersheriff, a combat war veteran, Chairperson of Latino Veterans of New Jersey, and upcoming member of Kearny’s Town Council representing the 4th Ward. Yet the titles tell only part of his story. What connects each chapter of Orlando’s life is the belief that service means creating opportunities for others to feel that they belong.
He knows that feeling personally. “I know what it feels like to be the child who is trying to understand a new language, a new culture, and a new world,” he says. “That experience has stayed with me throughout my entire life.”
Perhaps that experience is also why Orlando speaks so deeply about familia. “What I love most is the sense of familia. Not simply family by blood, but family by community.”
For Orlando, familia extends beyond the walls of a home. It can be found in neighbors welcoming a newly arrived family, veterans supporting one another, community organizations preserving culture, and one generation opening doors for the next.
His journey, from a Peruvian child arriving in Kearny without speaking English to a veteran, community leader, and public servant, also makes him a Hispanic role model for young people growing up in the same community today. His story demonstrates that embracing one’s heritage and embracing one’s American community do not have to be competing ideas. They can strengthen one another.
He describes generations of Hispanic families celebrating their culture, traditions, and memories while watching their children carry those traditions forward. “I hope our children never feel that they have to choose between being American and being Hispanic. They can be both.”
He also hopes the next generation understands that their parents and grandparents did not simply come to America to survive. “They came here to dream,” he says.
For Orlando, those dreams carry a responsibility: when a community gives someone an
opportunity to belong, that person can help create the same opportunity for someone else.
That idea has followed him from his military service to his work with veterans, from his
involvement in the Peruvian community to his public service in Hudson County and his
continued involvement in the town where he grew up.
For Orlando, Kearny’s future should remain rooted in that same sense of belonging, a
community where diversity is valued and celebrated, and where Hispanic children can see themselves reflected in the classrooms, businesses, leadership, civic organizations, and public life of their town.
His story offers a simple reminder of what community can mean: “You don’t have to come from the same place to belong to the same community.”
That message may be one of the most important parts of Orlando Miranda’s story. His life represents more than one person’s journey from Peru to Kearny. It represents what can happen when a community welcomes a family and, years later, a child from that family grows up determined to serve the community that welcomed him.
This Hispanic Heritage Month, may we celebrate not only the cultures and traditions that make Kearny diverse, but also the families and neighbors who make it home. May we take the time to learn one another’s stories, share in one another’s traditions, and recognize the generations who continue to shape the community we all call home.
Orlando’s journey reflects the heart of Hispanic Heritage Month: honoring where we came from, celebrating who we are, serving the community that helped shape us, and making sure the next generation knows that there is a place for them here.
Because in the end, Orlando Miranda’s story is also a Kearny story, a story of immigration, service, sacrifice, acceptance, and the enduring belief that a community becomes stronger when everyone has the opportunity to belong.
Marisol Joven is a longtime Kearny resident, freelance writer, community advocate, and one half of the Mari Twins, with family roots in Spain and Ecuador.
