Teresa Ann "Teri" Nelson

Teresa Ann “Teri” Nelson passed away at home on April 10, 2026. She was born on December 24, 1954, to Claudine Barnes Nelson and James McClain Nelson in Coronado, CA, at the naval base hospital. Teri lived a tremendous life full of activism, community, and joy. She was the oldest and only girl of five children, alongside brothers Craig (deceased), Joe, Chris, and Keith (deceased). Growing up, Teri said she didn’t like to be alone in her room with a party going on next door, so she’d often sneak into her brothers’ room after bedtime so they could put on comedy and talent shows together.

Humor and connection continued to be important to Teri throughout her life. In high school in Millington, TN, after moving around with her military family throughout elementary school, Teri had a tight-knit group of girlfriends that she maintained contact with for decades. She described herself as not popular but well-liked. Teri once shared that when she was young, she could close her eyes and imagine in her mind’s eye infinite dress styles with distinct fabrics and trimmings. When she was old enough to follow patterns, she sewed many of her own clothes both because she was handy enough to do so, and because the Villager and Ladybug clothes the popular girls wore were too expensive. Ever stylish and thrifty, she kept a log in her closet of what she wore to school so she would not have any repeats within a two-week rotation of outfits.

Teri lived through Integration of schools in the South and recalled that, depending on the audience, she caught praise and/or scorn from her peers for her welcoming attitude toward this change. She pursued a degree in Special Education at the University of Memphis, graduated in 1976, and went on to work in a residential setting and also the public school system in New Orleans and Memphis, with intellectually disabled and developmentally disabled children and adults. Later she would continue her work in the public school system in Massachusetts and would earn her Master’s degree in order to become a reading specialist.

Teri spent four years in her twenties living in New Orleans and often described that city as one that was so good to her, that she felt the city loved her. She explored by moving between multiple apartments and recalled that her favorite bedroom rented during this time was one that she painted periwinkle. In addition to working in education, she also worked as a hostess and at a sandwich shop. One night on a riverboat cruise associated with the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, she met an audio technician named John “Klondike” Koehler, with whom her boyfriend at the time was working the festival. Two years later, she and John would meet again at a subsequent Jazz Fest when Teri was single. After a distance correspondence, Teri moved to Wendell, Massachusetts, to be with John, and they married in 1983. In 1985, they welcomed their only child, a daughter, Aubry Nelson Koehler, into the world.

It took a long time for Teri to adapt to the cold, snowy winters of Massachusetts (John remembers her initially “never straying more than six feet from the wood stove”), not to mention living at the end of a dirt road where John owned 12 acres surrounded by State Forest. But adapt to it she did, so much so that she came to love the rural Northeast and longed for it after moving to North Carolina in 2016 to be with her daughter and new granddaughter, Ada. After an amicable divorce from John in 2011, Teri also dreamed of living out of a tiny house with everything just so and nothing extra. Teri leaves an incredible tribe of close friends in Western Massachusetts whom she was in daily contact with through the end, and whom she traveled to visit in person at least once a year over the past ten years.

The last twenty years of her life, Teri was especially dedicated to political activism and social justice. In 2006, she became involved with Deval Patrick’s gubernatorial campaign in Massachusetts and canvassed for Barack Obama in 2007. She also worked with a Restorative Justice non-profit organization in an effort to heal and restore relationships between offenders and victims.

After moving to North Carolina, it was as if she shot out of a canon onto the local political scene, with involvement in Camel City United Indivisible, Industrial Areas Foundation, Forsyth County North Carolina Community for Public Schools, Public School Strong, the Senior Dems, and the West Forsyth Cluster Dems, to name a few. She also volunteered as a Reading Warrior in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools District, regularly attended School Board meetings, and was a regular participant in the pro-democracy protests on the Green Street Pedestrian Bridge. Teri found a new tribe in Parkway United Church of Christ, where she experienced alignment with her own investment in community and justice. She was a firm believer in and fighter for antiracism, democracy, freedom of speech, public education access, and religious freedom, among countless other causes. Teri was known to start each day reading Heather Cox Richardson’s letters and end each day combing through the news.

Teri was a fantastic vegetarian cook, a visual learner with a shrewd sense for symmetry and color, a fastidious tender of her gardens, a true crime documentary watcher, and a loving and dedicated mother, grandmother, and sister. She was a stay-at-home grandmother to Ada while Aubry worked, including during the pandemic when Ada learned to read at age four, not so surprisingly after 18 months at home with a retired reading specialist. Teri was always forward thinking and health conscious knowing that she inherited the disease (familial polyposis) that led to the cancer that killed her father at age 55. Since her daughter inherited the same disease, she took care to prepare clean meals for both herself and her loved ones, and ensure that both she and they made it to their screenings and specialist appointments. It was truly a feat that her first diagnosis of cancer was at age 70 given that, if left unmanaged, nearly 100% of people with familial polyposis develop cancer by their 40s.

During Teri’s final year, she recovered beautifully from a Whipple surgery, chemotherapy, and a fall on Thanksgiving Day 2025 that resulted in spiral fractures on her left hand. At the end of September 2025, her post-chemo scan was cancer free, but by January 2026 she was diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer. Just as she lived life, so did she plan and prepare herself and her loved ones for her death with courage, careful attention to detail, and humor. She got on Hospice three weeks before she died, and up until the day before her death, she was getting up and down out of bed, talking to and texting with loved ones, and working to keep hydrated. When she died just before 5PM on Friday after a single day of being unable to get out of bed or communicate, it was as if she had slipped into a deep sleep. She asked that her body be donated to Wake Forest School of Medicine.

Teri is survived by her daughter, Aubry, soon-to-be son-in-law, Josh, her granddaughter, Ada, her brothers and their partners, Chris (Artie) and Joe (Sandy), her sister-in-law, Jan, her former partner, John, her former sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews, and her tribes of friends and fellow activists from the Northeast to the Southeast. Her sweet 10-pound dog, Kimmy Lou, will also miss her terribly.

A memorial service will be held at 12:00 PM, Saturday, April 18, 2026, at Hayworth-Miller Silas Creek Chapel with Rev. Craig Schaub and Rev. Michelle Johnson officiating. The family will receive friends from 10 AM – 12 PM, prior to the service at the funeral home.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Parkway United Church of Christ https://secure.myvanco.com/YHND/home or Trellis Supportive Care (Hospice) https://www.trellissupport.org/donate

Online condolences may be made at www.hayworth-miller.com