Fred Leavitt: Forty-Five Years

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Last Saturday was our forty-fifth wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe that we have been married for forty-five years. In my head I am forty-five years old.

I clearly remember the first day that I met Lisa. It was at church on the first day I moved to Edmonton to attend the U of A. I was with Greg and Gaylia’s family and Lisa came up and introduced herself to me. She was friendly and kind and she had a very effervescent personality. To make it all better, she was also beautiful. I could tell that she loved life. I can’t believe I talked her into marrying me.

It didn’t take long before we realized that we belonged together. Our views on life, religion and raising children align very well. Our personalities are almost completely opposite but I often think that is a good thing. We strengthen each other where we are weak. Lisa is outgoing and quick to make new friends. I am quiet and reserved and quite content to be a loner. I can’t be a loner while married to Lisa. She makes me a better person.

Lisa on the other hand stresses about everything that isn’t going the way she thinks it should. I can usually calm her down and help her relax.

Looking back on my life I can’t imagine what it would have been like without her. We have built many memories together and the very best memories include her and the six wonderful children we have raised together.

We have shared and overcome every challenge we have been faced with and we have done it together. We have comforted each other through many trials and carried each other through times of grief but we have also shared every joy together.

While Lisa will never enjoy Star Trek as much as I do and I will never enjoy a Hallmark movie like she does, I am happy to sit down and watch a Hallmark movie with her and she will actually take me to Star Trek concerts and we have gone to every Star Trek movie together when new movies come out.

Having said that, there are many things that we both love to do. When I was at BYU I audited a Ball Room Dance class and I taught Lisa everything that I could remember. While that isn’t much, we love to waltz, Samba, Cha Cha, Latin Hustle and others but we have excelled in Swing Dancing. We would Swing Dance with our kids and our kids would swing dance with each other. More recently we have joined a Scottish Country Dance group that we both love.

We also love being outdoors. We go to the beach; we used to go skiing often (but not so much once kids came along). We love to go hiking and often go for walks. Walking on the beach at sunset can’t be beat. Lisa also ran with me in several races but due to her Mortens Neuroma she could never be a serious runner.

We also love singing. We have always attended our Ward Choirs together and in our younger years we occasionally sang in our Sacrament Meetings together.

While Lisa would like to travel a lot more than I care to, we do love to travel and while we hope to travel more as we enter retirement, we have been able to travel to England, Scotland, France, Holland, Belgium, Germany, the Caribbean, Hawaii, Mexico and many of the US States together.

I guess what I’m saying is that Lisa is a part of who I am. Our lives are intertwined and I can’t imagine life without her. I am excited about spending more and more time with her in the future and my heart swells as I imagine spending the eternities with her. If the last forty-five years have been remarkable, I can’t imagine what it will be like in the eternities as we build worlds together.

I love her more than I could possibly express, I am blessed that my Father in Heaven brought her into my life and I am excited for the next forty-five years together. Well, forty-five years may be a bit ambitious, but I’ll take as many years as I can get. Happy anniversary sweetheart.

As I was sorting through pictures I came across many more than I need for a post but I thought I’d share them anyway because I received so much joy in reminiscing over them.