Teresa ‘Terry’ Chapman
Jan. 8, 1923 – Feb. 1, 2021
Terry Chapman passed away on Monday, February 1, 2021 at age 98 in Novato, where she had lived for almost 60 years. She lived a wonderful life, full of family, friends, art and adventure. Terry was a child of the Depression, moving around the Midwest including Minneapolis and Osseo, Minnesota where she attended a one-room school as her family moved west seeking work. When she told us of her early life, it sounded hard, but she always had a positive attitude, saying, “It was an adventure to move from town to town, always starting over.”
Terry attended high school in Seattle, moving there with her brother Sonny who was attending the University of Washington. There she met Edward “Ed” Chapman, brother of her high school friends Willy and Katharine; they married in 1941. In 1950, they headed down the coast in a station wagon with 3 little girls (Tammy, Heather and Teresa) and 2 kittens, staying in campgrounds along the way. They stayed for a time in Eureka and Hopland before settling in Cloverdale, where they had two more daughters – Nora and Sally.
The family moved to Novato in 1963 after a year in Whittier. Ed was a carpenter/contractor, building schools, churches and houses in Marin and Sonoma counties. Together Ed and Terry designed and built a family house on Midway Avenue, and then a home in Black Point. Terry started her work in retail at WT Grant in 1963, working also at TG&Y and Target.
Terry was always an artist, and as a mother of 5, she started going to night school to have one night a week to paint. She had a group of friends who took community college painting classes together starting in the 1960’s. After being banned from taking the class again for having repeated it too many times, the group began booking gallery time at the Marin and continued painting together. Rain, shine or holiday, Terry went off to paint on Monday mornings at the gallery with her friends. She worked in pastels, oils, and acrylics and in the 1950s displayed paintings in the Palace of Fine Art in San Francisco.
Terry was a wonderful mother and grandmother, with a warm heart, and a ready smile. Terry is survived by 5 daughters, 11 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren. She enjoyed traveling, taking trips to Mexico, England, Scotland, France and Italy. Her family will miss her dearly, but feels grateful and lucky that she was with them for so many years.
A celebration of Terry’s life will take place after the pandemic. She asked that her ashes be scattered at the ocean, and added that black umbrellas would be chic.
(To place a Life Tribute in a Marinscope Community newspaper, contact publisher Sherman R. Frederick via email at shermfrederick@gmail.com. )
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