Hunt: Love and marriage, and $30K for their favourite charities

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In this season of giving, what do you get the couple who has everything?

How about something to Feed The Lions?

Shawn Lean and Heather Henry have been a couple for 23 years. On Nov. 11, they decided to make it official. They got married.

They had kidded about it for years. “Our common joke was: ‘Once I get him/her trained enough,’” Lean said. “About a year ago, she said to me: ‘Do you ever think about getting married?’ And I said: ‘What for?’”

But suddenly, things got serious.

In January, Lean, 59, had a stent put in to address a 90-per-cent blockage in a main artery to his heart. Watching the procedure – “it totally freaks you out,” he said – made him somewhat reflective.

“I stopped joking about getting married,” he said. “About three months ago, I came home, and she was trying on clothes. I said: ‘Have you got anything else to try on?’” He pulled out an engagement ring.

Originally, they planned a low-key, just-make-it-legal ceremony in their lawyer’s office – and indeed, the ceremony that took place was in front of 22 members of the immediate family, including Lean’s two daughters, Chelsea, 37, and Logan, 24.

But Lean, who had sponsored dances for various charitable causes on a dozen previous occasions, came up with the idea of a fundraising dance to celebrate.

Heather was all in.

So, on Nov. 11 at the Delta Hotel, with the Cunningham Haines band and guest Clay Harrison providing the music, 350 people donated to two causes the couple hold dear: the Tobique Valley Back-Pack Program, which Logan Lean helped to form, and the Feed the Lions program, which operates out of Leo Hayes High School. Logan Lean, who now works in the forestry industry in Plaster Rock, was involved with Feed the Lions during her high school years and the cause remains close to their hearts.

“We didn’t want people buying us wedding gifts,” Shawn Lean said. “We don’t need anything. We told people: ‘Don’t waste money on a card or a bottle of wine … whatever money you were going to spend, donate it to the cause.’”

The result: $25,000, split between the two programs. Subsequent donations have bumped the amount to “a little over $30,000,” said Lean. He and Henry are donating 1,000 pounds of potatoes and $1,500 in turkeys.

“Kids are important,” he said simply.

He knows. Lean has daughters and makes no bones about the fact he is “extremely proud of both of them.”

But his company sponsored a Junior B hockey team for eight years and during that period, he always said he had two daughters and 18 sons. Eight former players and two former coaches still work for him. He spent eight years as the president of Fredericton Sports Investments, the local volunteer organization that raises money to support various sports teams in the community. (Incidentally, the 43rd annual FSI Sports Dinner and Auction takes place at the Richard J. Currie Center Saturday.)

Lean’s companies – he’s a vice-president of Office Interiors, president of Tommy’s Flooring and president of 711 Woodstock Holdings Ltd. and president of the Fredericton Caps Sports Group – donate to all the sports programs at Leo Hayes.

His benevolence is sincere. Diagnosed with bladder cancer at age 21, “I never take for granted how fortunate my life has become,” Lean said. He recalls his doctor at the time telling him: “You should do everything you want to do for as long as you can do it.”

That’s been his guiding philosophy. He’s part of a Facebook group called “No Regrets Adventures” and he and his wife live that way.

“Heather embraces that,” he said. “If there’s something we want to do, we do it. 

“I have a zero bucket list. My bucket is full.”

At least since his wedding day.