April 29, 1943 – March 12, 2022 (age 78)
Teri Maureen Pitkin, our beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and devoted friend, passed away peacefully and surrounded by family on March 12, 2022, the end of a life of adventure and suffering and love. She faced every hardship and injustice with courage, and she faced most of them with sass, right through to the last days of her life.
Teri was born on April 29, 1943, to Gwenna Morton Haynes and Rowland Wiley Haynes, and she was raised in Huntington Park, California, in a circle of extended family and caring. She was a tomboy, forever climbing trees and rooftops, fishing for albacore off Catalina Island with her dad, fetching tadpoles and frogs from the dump after spring rains. And so it surprised no one that, though she was a Southern California girl at heart, Teri developed a lifelong love of Utah’s Cache Valley, with its rugged terrain and wildlife and horses.
Though she was a tomboy, she was a glamorous one: Teri was a homecoming princess at Huntington Park High School; she worked as a model and professional hypnotist’s assistant; she sang with her high school choir at the opening ceremonies of the 1960 Winter Olympics.
Teri married Terry Joseph Boschetti in 1961, and together they had four choice sons: Rock Anthony, Brian Todd, Timothy Rowland, and Russell Lyle. Teri and Terry divorced in 1983, and in 1987 she married Willis Lloyd Pitkin. While she and Will had no children together, Teri inherited five step-children by that marriage: David Sherwood, Paul Eric, Joseph Reeves, Sara Love, and Clarity Faith.
Teri found one of the loves of her life in her thirty-year relationship with Will. Both their friends and their blended family saw how well Teri and Will harmonized their humor and spirit, as well as what a good sport Teri was with her sweet and idiosyncratic husband.
Will and Teri retired to Palm Desert, California, in 2011, where Will passed away in 2013. Teri spent the last years of her life with her dear and devoted friend Ron J Thorkildsen; they were constant companions and much in love, traveling to parts of the world Teri had never imagined she’d visit.
As everyone knew, Teri was a nurturer her whole life long. Whatever she did-whether serving as a classroom aide and lunch lady for Cache County Schools, or rescuing dogs or stray cats or wounded birds that she would nurse back to health, or quilting and crocheting and knitting a thousand things to keep loved ones warm-she always did in the service of others. She lived her life believing that there is always room for one more. Many of us who had ever felt excluded from other families, other communities, knew that there was a place for us at Teri’s table.
She has moved on now, following her sons Brian and Dave, her husband Will, and her sister Gwenna Louise Johnson in death. She leaves behind her beloved companion Ron; her children Rock Boschetti, Paul Pitkin (Jim Hardcastle), Tim Boschetti, Joe Pitkin (Carlyn Eames), Russell Boschetti (Mitch Stath), Sara Sanderson (Mark Doxtader), and Clarity Sanderson (Marcel Jonker); eleven grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; a thousand friends; and the two most spoiled Jack Russell terriers in the history of humanity.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Teri’s name to two of the charities that she most loved in life, Fran’s Place Center for Cancer Counseling in Brea, CA, and the Humane Society of Utah.