Theresa C. Onstad's Obituary
Theresa C. Onstad of Walnut Creek passed away at home on December 21st, 2018, surrounded by her family.
Terry was born in Bayonne, New Jersey on July 13, 1932. The youngest of three children born to Aleksandra and Frank Nikonowicz. She graduated from Bayonne High School. At the age of 19, she moved to New York City to live and work.
In the early 1950s, she and several close girlfriends left NYC and travelled across the United States by car, with sojourns in Miami, Baltimore, and Denver before eventually settling in San Francisco. She attended college for several years at the University of Denver where she studied art history.
She also studied fine art and painting with Alexander Nepote at San Francisco State University and Giacomo Giuseppe Patri at the Patri School of Fine Art. This is also where she met Peter Onstad who she married in 1962 at the Swedenborgian Church in San Francisco.
When she first moved to San Francisco, she lived in a lively flat on Bush St with girlfriends and later had apartments on Carl Street and on Saturn Street (where her neighbors at the time included Ruth Asawa, Manuel Neri, and Joan Brown.)
During the 1960s, Terry worked in fashion as a bridal buyer and as a window display designer at department stores such as Joseph Magnin’s and H. Liebes & Company.
During the late 60s she returned to Bayonne, New Jersey to raise her daughter around her extended family including her mother, sister Regina, and her brother Frank and their families. During this time, she worked for a tour company, Domenico Tours, where she sometimes brought her daughter to work and gave her odd jobs to do around the office.
In 1985, she returned once more to San Francisco, where she lived with a friend in Noe Valley and worked as an office manager for Hood Miller & Associates architectural firm, until relocating to Walnut Creek. After retiring, she volunteered at the Bay Area Crisis Nursery in Concord, CA.
She made many lifelong friends in San Francisco over the years and in Walnut Creek.
She is survived by her daughter, Hannah Onstad, her grandson, Ellery Latham, her two nieces, Doris Sweeney and Joyce Nikonowicz, and her nephew Bob Aleksiewicz.
A memorial service will be held at 1:00 pm on January 4th,, 2019 at the Meditation Chapel, Chapel of the Chimes, located at 4499 Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, California.
The service will be followed by a gathering for refreshments at 453 59th Street, Oakland.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests a small donation be made to either:
Bay Area Crisis Nursery of Concord
or Trees for the Future, a global organization that has planted 65 million trees since its inception in 1989.
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