Teri Sue Vincent

Teri Sue Vincent died peacefully Friday night, the 3rd of November. 

Teri was born in Rockford, Illinois in 1954, the daughter of Eugene and Lola Gustafson of Rockford. She had two siblings, Tana and Tracey, and grew up in a happy household. She attended Rockford Public Schools and graduated from Rockford East High School in 1972, where she was ranked fifth in a class of approximately 500 students. After high school, she attended Northern Illinois University, majoring in Medicine, and was admitted to Northwestern Medical School between her sophomore and junior years at Northern. At Northwestern, she completed courses required, graduated, and became a physical therapist.

She began her career in Chicago, working with physically challenged children at the Illinois Children’s School and Rehabilitation Center, where she eventually became the lone physical therapist with one aide, handling a caseload of about 80 challenged students.

In 1983, she married Mark Vincent, a Rockford native who was living in Silver City, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula. The couple moved to Maple Grove, Minnesota where Teri took a job in Osseo, Minnesota in an adult care facility. Soon after, their first child, Andrew, was born in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Thinking of the families back in Rockford, Mark and Teri moved home in January of 1985 and eventually bought a home on Newburg Road. Not long after, a second son, Peter, was born.

Teri took a job as an itinerant therapist working in the Harlem School District and worked in several facilities until she retired in 2014. She was very proud of her two sons who graduated high school with honors and attended Northern Illinois University, Andrew going on to get a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of South Carolina.

Teri was an enthusiastic sports fan, loving baseball, football, and basketball, and she had a special fondness for high school wrestling. She followed all the local conference teams and attended several matches involving Rockford East High School and Harlem High School, who had great programs and many state place winners. She went to the IHSA state wrestling finals for 10 straight years to watch “her boys” and cheer them on.

All and all, she will be remembered as a very vibrant person, and to many of her patients she was considered a miracle worker. She facilitated the recovery of several wounded and sometimes nearly defeated people.

Teri is survived by her husband Mark, sons Andrew (Haley) Vincent and Peter (Amy) Vincent, sister Tracey (Jack) Armstrong, and several cousins and grandchildren. She is predeceased by her parents, Eugene and Lola Gustafson, and sister Tana Gustafson.

She wished to have no formal service, and in lieu of flowers requested donations to the Northern Illinois Hospice Foundation at 4751 Harrison Ave, Rockford, Illinois, 61108.

(The drawing above this memoriam is of Teri holding and kissing her son, Peter.)