Teresa Simmons

Teresa Lynne Simmons, 65, of Macomb, Illinois, passed away on 2 January, 2025, at Quincy's Blessing Hospital from complications related to colon cancer. She was born on 13 October, 1959, in Grandview, Missouri, and is survived by her cat, Marvin Gaye, her son, Christophe-Thomas Simmons of Montréal (Canada), her mother, Serena Simmons (née Murphy) of Knoxville, Illinois, and her sister and brother-in-law, Melissa (née Simmons) and Paul Hinton of Rantoul, Illinois. She was preceded in death by her father, Robert Thomas Simmons of Knoxville, Illinois, in May 2020. Teresa was a professor emerita of Western Illinois University (retired in 2020), having dedicated much of her career to teaching advertising and mass communications and preparing her students for professional careers in marketing. She also proudly worked as an account manager for United Airlines at Leo Burnett in Chicago, which ultimately led to her university career, as well as assistant professor at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, NSW, Australia.

Teresa was an avid reader and had an impeccable sense of style. She was also an adventurous, curious and passionate traveler, having explored every continent except Antarctica. She was especially fond of visiting Europe, where she travelled the most extensively and spent much of her free time pursuing culture, gastronomy, archaeology and art history. She especially gravitated toward Paris, the one place in the world where she felt the most at home. Her love of paleolithic cave paintings also took her on an odyssey through rural parts of France, Spain, and Italy, as she made it her mission to visit every publicly open cave and rock shelter with cro magnon and neanderthal paintings and carvings in Europe. She also completed a separate quest to visit the interiors of every medieval stave church in Norway with her son during five separate extensive trips through the majestic central and western fjords. Her passion for travel and deeply heartfelt love for animals inspired her to pursue several safaris through Sub-Saharan Africa, where she found a profound sense of peace among the wildlife. Beyond Europe and Africa, her travels took her to many other far-flung corners of the world, from the Arctic to Polynesia, from Tasmania to Uzbekistan.

Since her retirement, she dedicated herself to taking care of her mother, to continued travelling, and to an extensive project reconstructing her direct ancestors from careful research and double-checking each relation. Through this work she learned that she was the great-granddaughter of many of the movers and shakers of the middle ages, including Mohammad, prophet of Islam, the long-haired Merovingian kings and queens of France (her direct ancestors including, among others, Clovis I, Dagobert I, Frédégonde of Neustria), the Carolingians (Charlemagne, Lothar I, Louis the Pious, Charles le Chauve), the Anglo-Saxons (Cynewald of Mercia, Alfred the Great of Wessex), the Vikings/Normans (Gorm the Old of Jelling, William the Conqueror), the Ottonians (Henry the Fowler), the emperors of Byzantium (Alexios I Komnenos, Isaac II Angelos), the Plantagenets (Eleanor of Aquitaine, John of England, Edward I), the Árpáds (Saint Stephen I of Hungary), the Afonsines (Afonso IV of Portugal), and the Capetians (notably Saint Louis IX of France). Perhaps most remarkably, on one branch of the family tree, her great-grandfather (x22), King Philippe IV "le Bel" of France, happened to be her spitting image according to contemporary portraits. Also, in keeping with her passion for art history, Teresa discovered that the German Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder, known for his friendship with Martin Luther and his soft, sensual nudes, was her great-grandfather (x14).

Out of respect for her hereditary roots and her love for France, Teresa Simmons will be memorialized at a private event in Paris, France, for her immediate family and closest friends on her birthday in October 2025. She has been cremated, and her ashes will bloom as flowers in her favourite places around the world.