Teresa O'Shea

1952 - 2018

Teresa (Teri) Jean O'Shea (age 66) passed away peacefully on November 28, 2018 at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton MA. She was a kind and generous person with a wonderful sense of humor, a passion for social justice, and a fierce love of life.

Teri was born into a military family on February 4, 1952 and moved every two years during her childhood, living at naval bases in Rhode Island, Norway, Japan, Pennsylvania and a number of other locations. She earned her B.A. in Journalism from the University of California at Berkeley.

Inspired by youthful idealism at age 19, Teri joined the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones. In the early years, Jones seemed to be dedicated to fighting racism and helping people who were marginalized, but Teri ended up being held captive in Jonestown in Guyana, and she was the last person to escape before the massacre in 1978. As a result of her experiences in Jonestown, she lived with severe post-traumatic stress disorder for the rest of her life.

In spite of her personal challenges, she dedicated her life to helping others and spent 30 years working as an advocate for people with disabilities. She learned sign language and became involved in the deaf community in Brooklyn, NY in the 1980's. When she moved to Springfield, MA in 1989, she joined the staff of Stavros Center for Independent Living, and wrote the grant that established their Peer Assistive Technology Project. She was a pioneer in helping people with disabilities gain access to the technological devices that could help them. She served on the Governor's Advisory Commission on Disability Policy and she was on the board of several other state-wide disability policy groups.

Following her time at Stavros, she managed the Adaptive Computer Lab at Holyoke Community College, and then moved on to work with The Resource Partnership and CareerPoint (now known as MassHire Holyoke), where she helped people with disabilities get jobs and access more services.

One constant in her life was her love of poetry. She started writing poetry at age 7 after calling the public library to find out where she could get a "poetic license." In 2011 she published a book of poems and pictures about her Jonestown experiences, Jonestown Lullaby, and she was active in the Florence Poets Society, participating in their readings and publishing poems in their Silkworm journals. She was also a gifted visual artist who loved to paint and do crafts.

Teri is survived by her daughter, Vita Thais O'Shea and a large circle of friends and colleagues who loved and admired her. Online or mailed donations can be made in her honor to Stavros Center for Independent Living, 210 Old Farm Road, Amherst, MA 01002. A memorial will be held for her in Northampton, MA on Sunday afternoon, February 3, 2019, the day before her birthday.

Ahearn Funeral Home

(413)587-0044