Fred Lehman Obituary, Death – The daughter is trying to forgive despite her sadness, hoping to follow in the footsteps of her parents, who perished on Sunday while leaving church in an accident involving a young driver. Lyndsay Lehman stated of her parents, Fred and Mary Lehman, “I know my parents would have loved him.” “I know they would have forgiven him.”
On Sunday night, Fred Earl Lehman, 76, and his wife Mary Louise Lehman, 79, were killed in a collision between their 1999 Buick Century and a 2011 Camaro driven by an eighteen-year-old who was heading west on University. The Des Moines Police Department released a statement stating that the Lehman’s car hit a power post before flipping. Saying, “You know, there are some things that are worse than death,” Lyndsay answered.
We know this young man will bear this burden for the rest of his life, and although I am aware of the suffering our family is going through, we are sobbing for him. I think that should never happen to anyone. After fifty-seven years of marriage, Fred and Mary had four children, eleven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. We have spent the last 35 years of our lives in Des Moines. “They just got to meet their newest great-grandson this week,” Lyndsay went on. “His father is actually deployed in South Korea and his mom was in Vegas, stateside, so she flew here this past week to introduce the baby to everybody, so they got to meet him.”
A home raised by Fred and Mary was compassionate and understanding. “My parents worked with the homeless, but my parents homed the homeless as well,” Lyndsay stated. “When we were kids, there was usually an old or impoverished person living in our house. Our home was never closed.” “Retired with a job,” Lyndsay put Fred and Mary’s situation. “My parents actually cared for a man named Paul who is intellectually disabled,” she stated. “So that’s what my parents have been doing since my dad retired.” “I think Fred and Mary were the most giving people I’ve ever met,” remarked Mary’s brother-in-law David Headley.
Fred, according to Headley, “essentially never knew a stranger.”He would often offer assistance to people and engage in conversation with complete strangers. He wanted to help people, therefore he gave out big sums of money to individuals who really couldn’t afford them. He was more concerned with other people than with himself. I have never met someone as loving as he seems to be. Throughout his life, Fred served as a pastor and missionary in the church.
In order to serve as missionaries and impart the religion’s teachings to his family, Fred relocated them to the Philippines in 1986. In 1988, the Lehman family returned to the United States and settled in Des Moines permanently after social instability made it unsafe for them to finish their mission. According to Lyndsay, “My dad is the man who taught me how to love people.” It was my father who first taught me the value of giving. My father taught me the same lesson about himself: out of everyone he knew, he was the one who needed forgiveness the most.”
Mary Lehman was a dedicated administrative assistant at the Iowa State Bar Association for almost twenty years. Her coworkers loved her and called her “Mama Mary”. She was committed to her coworkers and the association’s members, and she always made guests feel at home when they visited the bar association’s offices. According to an Iowa State Bar Association statement provided to the Register, she considered the members of the Young Lawyers Division (YLD) as extended family and was particularly close to them.
“They were grateful for her investment in their careers and personal lives as well, as evidenced by the numerous holiday cards and pictures of their families and children she continued to receive years after they had aged out of the YLD.” Mary, according to Headley, was invaluable and treated the YLD like a large family. “My mother was an angel,” Lyndsay remarked. “She was a plain, honest woman. She simply had a heart of pure kindness.”
