Teiko Taguchi Stafford

Teiko T. Stafford, age 89, passed away on the afternoon of Monday the 14th day of October 2024. Teiko was born in 1934 in Tokyo, Japan to Seizo and Tatsu Taguchi. 

Teiko met a dashing military airman named Bill Stafford in Rapid City, South Dakota where he was stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base. Bill and Teiko fell in love and they both married in 1964. They had 3 children abroad Bill’s military service, which are their daughter Barbara, and two son’s Bill and Kenneth. Bill and Teiko’s last duty station was moving back home to the Great State of Texas in 1974 to Carswell Air Force Base until Bill’s retirement in 1981. During her husband’s military service, Teiko devoted herself as a homemaker to her three children.

Teiko worked for a short time in her career and was employed by the Nippon Electronics Company (NEC) for 13 years. She served in the capacity of a quality control inspector ensuring that every unit that came out of production was to expectation.

Both Bill and Teiko devoted their time to help bring souls to Christ through the Friends Speak program ensuring that those that needed help in understanding the Word of God had no barriers. To this day, Bill and Teiko kept close to those relationships that they built over the years through this program. Bill and Teiko were always devoted to God and family. 

Bill and Teiko spent time together traveling the world and country enjoying God’s creations and making lifelong memories. Although for Teiko there was only one favorite past time…and that was shopping. If there was a sale she was the one to sniff out a good deal, and if it wasn’t on sale rest assured she would find some way of ensuring it was a good deal that favored her in the end. It didn’t matter what she was shopping for, it was the art of the hunt that made it her favorite past time. 

She also loved to cook and there wasn’t anyone that didn’t enjoy the Japanese cuisine that she loved creating for others, whether it was just for two or an army of twenty she always was able to suffice and still have leftovers to send everyone home with. There was something else about her cooking and that was Teiko “hot”. When Teiko served a dish it wasn’t just hot, there was a certain degree that was just under molten that everyone experienced on the first bite, and the second bite usually was about 10 minutes later once the feeling came back to your lips.

Beside the love of her life Bill, she had one other and that was Chesai. Chesai, in Japanese means “tiny”, and this was a dog she had rescued that nobody else wanted, and with one glance Teiko knew she was the one. This dog didn’t know how lucky it was, and Teiko didn’t know how lucky she was because the two were inseparable over the course of the last 10 years. Chesai was faithful to the one that saved her life and laid by her side for days until she took her last breath and went home to be with our Lord. An unceasing love for another.

Teiko is preceded in death by her parents Seizo and Tatsu, and her husband of 57 years Bill Stafford and is survived by her 3 children and two grandchildren.