Obituary of Theresa Elizabeth Campbell

Theresa Elizabeth Campbell

October 26, 1927 -  February 21, 2021

 

Our beautiful mother, grandmother, and great grandmother is almost home.  For 93 years she walked quietly among us, and unless you knew her, you might think she lived an unremarkable life, but she and her story were singular.   

 

She was born Theresa Elizabeth Wilson on October 26, 1927 on the far flung island of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in the small coal mining town of Dominion, to Wilfred Wilson and Elizabeth Lahey.  She was born a coal miner’s daughter and grew up to become a coal miner’s wife.  Her life, during and after, was as simple and unassuming as its beginning in a small, coal company house overflowing with two adults, ten children and no central heating to ward off the icy winds of the North Atlantic.

 

In spite of the hardships endured by most of the struggling families in towns like this, Theresa and her closest sisters found fun and escape in hours spent down by the shore, which was just a few blocks away.  When not digging for clams or picking wild berries out in the nearby woods, they would round up neighbor kids and start up ball games with makeshift equipment crafted by their Papa Wilson out of yard scraps.

 

In the winter, the older kids in the family would share a pair of hand me down ice skates and play hockey with sticks and rocks on the frozen ponds or on the bay next to the ocean.  Surviving the haphazard conditions was a feat, because falling through the ice could be fatal, and learning to fly over pitted ice on skates three sizes too big, made for some incredible athletes, and so it was with Theresa.

 

In 2010 when she was 83 years old, she fulfilled a dream of skating in Rockefeller Center at Christmas, and she did it on speed skates.  Incredibly, we managed to get her treasured racing skates through airport security for the flight from Florida to N.Y.   For the unfamiliar, racing skates have longer blades than standard figure skates.  A switchblade would be no match for those two sharply honed pieces of steel, but the TSA agent gave her a wink, and looked the other way.  A day later, I watched her step out onto that iconic ice and glide back in time when she was swift and sure. She was transcendent!

 

But even this moment didn’t eclipse meeting Bobby Orr after his winning Stanley Cup goal in 1970.  Theresa and her husband, Daniel, emigrated from Canada in 1953 and settled in the Boston area where they lived for over 40 years.  They became well-loved and popular members of the Boston Skating Club, and like everyone else in Boston, avid Bruins hockey fans.  Orr was a fellow Canadian and the stuff of legend.  There is a cherished photo of him hugging her in her office on the day of that meeting, and his personal message to her written on a photocopy of the winning goal from the Boston Globe. 

 

During those years in Boston, she also belonged to the local softball team where she ultimately became the lead pitcher, and had her own mini-moment of glory as a featured item in the local newspapers for her killer pitch, even though she was the oldest player in the league. 

 

When I was a teenager, my friends insisted that my parents “hang out” with us on weekend beach trips up to Gloucester in the summer.  We would arrive at dawn to secure “dibs” on the lone baseball field, just so they could get up a game with my parents as featured players.  It was the same in the winter when impromptu hockey games would be set up on local ponds and lakes whenever Dan and Terry showed up.  I really believe my friends just used me as an excuse to be with them.  

 

Along with her athletic abilities, Theresa also had a natural gift for music which she inherited from her father, Wilfred, who had no formal training. According to him, one day he just picked up the fiddle and started playing.  He and a group of coal mining buddies made “beer money” on weekends by making the rounds in various towns, firing up foot-stomping Celtic tunes. Theresa had the “ear” as well, and loved when Papa would let her sit at the piano with him, where together their fingers danced along the black and white keys playing popular tunes and holiday songs.  She played all her life and never learned how to read sheet music because she didn’t need to, but unlike her Papa, who loved to perform, she had to be coaxed to sit at the piano because she never wanted to be the center of attention.

 

As a child, she also evidenced an innate intelligence that seemed uncanny, given her family’s circumstances.  For a brief time she attended school and was devastated when her mother took her out in the ninth grade and sent her to work to help support the family.  This bothered her for the rest of her life.  Regardless of how far she advanced in her various positions at major companies like First National Stores and Bolt, Baranek and Newman, for Raytheon Technologies, she was always embarrassed by her lack of a higher education.  She was too humble to appreciate that she became a self-taught book-keeper, accountant, and manager through her own ingenuity and determination, and with nothing but her wits and barely a 9th grade education.  

 

More than anything else, it is and was this innate humility that defines her, as much as her genuine goodness.  Every action, every kindness offered up to others was unequivocally selfless and pure of heart. There was never any ulterior motive or self-serving agenda, and whatever she gave of herself was almost always qualified with the statement….Oh…It’s nothing!  And of course, it never ever occurred to her to expect anything in return.

 

This humility didn’t diminish her, however. On the contrary, it fortified her strength of character.  It’s what drove her to better herself, improve her circumstances, and search for more out of a life that began so poorly.  With a three year old child and only 300 dollars in their pockets, she and Daniel left the shelter of everything and everyone they had ever known, and got on a train to a new country and the possibility of a better future.  There were no jobs, no friends or family waiting at the other end, but they believed in each other and the promise of “The States.”   Their story, is very much like those of the thousands of other immigrants of their generation, determined to reach beyond themselves and their limitations and create a lasting legacy for their children.  And they did. 

 

Theresa’s legacy is difficult to adequately honor.  She possessed a lifelong, enduring grace and innocence of mind, body, heart and soul, that never wavered or faltered.  Never.  For 93 years she embodied kindness, compassion, simplicity, dignity and unassailable integrity.  She rarely complained and suffered through profound loss and heartbreak without bitterness or resentment.  She lovingly cared for Daniel through a heart attack, quadruple bypass surgery, a subsequent stroke, and then13 more years of a life radically compromised by disability.  During all of it, she asked for nothing for herself, and never complained.   Several years later she tragically lost her only son, Robert.  Even then, she made her suffering and grief her own, never wanting to burden any of us with a pain too great to bear, the loss of her child, her only son.

 

She was a skinny, self-conscious little kid living near the railroad tracks that carried the coal cars to unknown and unimagined places.  The old joke about getting coal in your stocking at Christmas wasn’t such a fiction during her childhood.  The best she could hope for was a piece of fruit or candy on Christmas morning.  There were no dolls.  A new pair of socks was a luxury, and one that would have to be shared with at least a few more siblings. Now we understand why she collected all those porcelain dolls in her middle age.

 

Yet she rose up, got married, moved from Glace Bay to Boston, then Florida, then to London, Ontario and finally to Oregon to be near her granddaughter and great grandchildren.  She lived an autonomous, self-made life with few resources and virtually no financial help.  On the way, she skied in Vermont, saw the Swiss and Austrian Alps, spent summer days in London, England doing all the usual tourist stuff, and looked out over the unparalleled Hong Kong cityscape at night from a room with a view.  

 

She was a consummately private and shy and self-conscious person, but still so sweet and full of life, that neighbors, strangers and coworkers were naturally drawn to her and maintained these friendships over decades and thousands of miles in between.  Everyone loved Terry.  

 

In her early days, few Cape Bretoners had a camera, so only a handful of photographs exist.  There isn’t even one from her wedding day, October 27, 1947, but it doesn’t really matter, because Dan and Terry forged their own permanent record of love and honor in sickness and in health until death.  They were their own living testament.  Besides, Theresa absolutely hated having her picture taken, so it’s been difficult gathering photos memorializing so much of her life.  She never understood how beautiful she was, how incredibly blue her eyes were, or how sweet and gentle and comforting her face and manner were.  She preferred to stand quietly in the background. 

 

Even without the photographic record, her claims to fame are what our memories are made of now.  She made the absolute best Strawberry/Rhubarb pies, Magic Squares, Corn Beef and Cabbage, and Thanksgiving Turkey Gravy.  And she did almost all of it on a kitchen counter that was about 2 feet square.  She was a fierce competitor on the ice, in the field, and in her later years, at cards and in the bowling alley, and you didn’t stand a chance against her in Horseshoes! 

 

Even though we were poor when we were kids, somehow, by some miracle she managed to keep our tiny one bedroom apartments immaculate, find us Easter outfits and new school clothes, and made Christmas magic during a time when an old accounting book of hers showed that there was only 5 cents remaining from pay day at the end of every work week.

 

She worked the night shift at a factory and then came home at dawn to send me off to school and take care of a baby for the rest of the day.  Later she graduated up to a job in an industrial laundry with little to no ventilation where the temperature would run up to triple digits on hot summer days.  And no, she never complained.  She just worked harder and insisted that the boss teach her how to keep the books.  

 

It’s important to know that although she may have been quiet and shy, although she may have shunned the spotlight or craved attention, although she was so eager to give although so much had been taken from her, Theresa wasn’t weak or compliant or submissive. Life did not “happen” to her; she made her life happen for her.  She was a formidable woman, strong, determined, focused, and tireless in always wanting to grow outside and beyond her circumstances.

 

And this is nothing.  Just a pathetically small glimpse into the greatness of my 5’2” mother. The coal miner’s daughter, who became the coal miner’s wife, who became a mother, grandmother and great grandmother, was always something even greater.  She was an incomparable human being who was loved, honored, cherished, respected, and admired because her kind of goodness hardly exists anymore. 

 

We, her family, are devastated, but we are so honored to have shared our part of life with her and relieved to know that she’s finally free from the cares and weight of this world, free again to glide over the ice with the wind in her hair, heart pounding, exhilarated.  

 

When the world heals, our family hopes to take her and Robert, our Bob, back home to Cape Breton, where they belong and where they can rest together, not far from the road and the ocean leading back to where it all began.

 

We are Dianne Farbiarz, her daughter; Tessan Wess and Daniel Campbell, her grandchildren; Brian Wess, her son-in-law; Aliyah and Ronan Wess, her great grandchildren; her found family, Linda De Cristoforo, Jason and Elan Farbiarz, their wives Stephanie and Melissa, and their children, Ethan, Cassia, Judah, Caleb and Silas.  Of all the original Wilson clan, Geraldine Wilson, Theresa’s sister and the youngest of the ten children of Wilfred and Elizabeth Wilson, is the last remaining sibling.  Loved and lost were Evangeline, Lloyd, Jean, Sonny, Alice, Winifred, Mary and Beatrice.

 

Theresa was also blessed with so many cousins, nieces and nephews, and dear friends that there are far too many to name here, but please know that it was you, her family and extended family, the people in her life, that were the center of everything she loved, who made her the happiest, and what she missed the most at the end. 

  

Thank you all for sharing yourselves and loving Theresa, our Terry. This is surely her richest legacy and a lasting tribute to the wonderful woman that she was, and who she will forever be in our hearts and memories.  

 

If you have any memories of your own, I hope that you will feel comfortable posting them here or privately, so that together we can finish writing her story.  

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Theresa Campbell, please visit Tribute Store