Rebecca Teitz Ackerman
July 10, 1963-March 2, 2025
Palo Alto, California

Rebecca Teitz Ackerman, resident of Palo Alto, California, died at the age of 61 on March 2, 2025, of lung cancer. She penned her own obituary, which follows below. She leaves behind beloved sons Joshua and Daniel Ackerman and son-in-law musa bouderdaben; mother Elaine Tallmadge Osborn; sister Jessie and brother-in-law Travis Becker and their children, Zachary, Samuel, and Dylan/Madeleine; brother Alexander Teitz; aunt Louise Ellen Teitz; uncle Andrew and aunt Lois Teitz; cousins Liz Teitz and Alie Teitz; aunt Harriet and uncle Chris Martin; and cousins Justine Martin, Peter Martin, and Sita Jeeva and their children. Her father Richard Stuart Teitz, aunt Lexi Teitz, and cousin Thomas Martin predeceased her. Rebecca was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts, where her father was director of the Worcester Art Museum. She went to public school and graduated from Doherty Senior High School in 1980. She attended the University of Pennsylvania (she joked that she went south to school), where she was a member and president of Sigma Delta Tau sorority, Beta Chapter. She received a BA in psychology (1984) and MSEd in counseling (1985) from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in marketing from the Wharton School (1988). Talk about overeducated! She loved direct marketing and worked for many years in the catalog industry in the NJ/NYC area, later adding email and online marketing to her repertoire. Yes, old school. Rebecca hated snow, and she achieved her long-held dream of moving to California in 2022, where she reveled in being close to her sister’s family. (And no snow.) She enjoyed traveling and had a big trip to the Galápagos in summer 2023 with her children and her sister’s family. Other travels included Bolivia, England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Monaco, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, and multiple trips to Maui, Hawaii. She did not enjoy cancer, but she had it three times: thyroid, breast, and lung. She participated in any medical and genetic testing she could, but nothing was yet found. She also had severe Crohn’s disease, which was diagnosed when she was 15 years old. She fought against these diseases and other conditions valiantly and lived her life with good cheer and optimism. She was an ardent knitter, particularly of baby blankets. Her first project was a baby blanket for her college roommate Sue. Recently she sent another off to Sue’s daughter for her second child. She tried to stop buying yarn, but she had STABLE (STash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy). Rebecca was known for her wit, love of wordplay, and fondness for poems by Edgar Allen Poe. If prompted she could start reciting them to you. She loved her family, friends from junior high school and beyond, sailing, coffee ice cream, the Muppets, Star Trek, bad jokes (“Why is 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 9.”), Venn diagrams, the Oxford comma, and animal companions.