Jun. 19, 1985 – Aug. 5, 2018

I lost my firstborn daughter, Johanna Mary Leikvold. She was born Jun. 19, 1985, and passed away Aug. 5, 2018. She had 31 wonderful years of life and those years were also the best for me.

As a little girl, Johanna enjoyed being outside and playing with her younger brother, Carsten, in the backyard in their pool, tree house and on their trampoline. More adventurous days were spent walking across the road into Lincoln Memorial Garden. In between all of this fun, she was watched carefully and guided by her father, my only husband, Daniel C. Leikvold, who passed away in 2014.

As an adult, she was the responsible type and worked well in her jobs at Pier 1 Imports and Zelle Title and she enjoyed these jobs very much. She also earned an associate’s degree and had a never-ending desire to become an attorney like her dad. She and I had big plans to move to lovely northern California, and her goal was to attend University of California, Berkeley, and earn a degree in environmental law. It was her true love and she wanted to fight hard for keeping of our land and especially the redwood trees and the Pacific Ocean.

She spent many good years with a man she loved named Mick, an incredibly great guitarist who taught Johanna the true love of music. Johanna always had much to say and stood up strong and long with her beliefs. She also had a mind like a steel trap and never forgot all the facts she learned with her education. Needless to say, this loss was incredibly wrong for us all and enormously painful for me.

I now believe that she and her dad are having one good time after another in heaven. These days, I chuckle when I remember my daughter talking her father’s ear off. This coming April, I, and the family who loved her so much, will travel to northern California where we will give both her and her father’s ashes to the redwood trees and the Pacific Ocean. They both will be happy to be placed there. As for me, I will feel some contentment that I did all that I could for them who I continue to love with my whole heart and soul.

May they rest in peace and realize that before too long, I’ll be joining them with a load of lectures and perhaps a joke or two.

Submitted by her mother, Karen Guger