Laura Wittenberg

Laura Mathilda Wittenberg, age 103, of Buffalo, MN, passed away peacefully on Sunday, June 8, 2025, at The Glenn Buffalo.

Funeral services will be held at 11:00 AM on Friday, June 13, at Laestadian Lutheran Church, 1501 South 8th Street, Brainerd, with visitation beginning one hour prior to the service. Interment will follow at Evergreen Memorial Gardens in Brainerd.

Laura turned 100 years old on January 10, 2022. She was born in Alajarvi, Finland, and she is the oldest of seven siblings. She has survived them all. When she was five years old, she moved to Port Arthur (Thunder Bay), Ontario, Canada. She lived most of her life in Canada, where she worked as a drug store clerk, a maid, and a manager. During her work at Hoito Restaurant, she met her husband, Toivo Leppamaki. They got married in 1945, right after World War II.

Laura was a woman of faith. She became a member of the Apostolic Lutheran Church in Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada in 1966. She was a member of the Laestadian Lutheran Church in Cokato and in Brainerd.

When Toivo passed away in 1993, she became a widow for nine years, and then she met her second husband, John Wittenberg, in Brainerd, MN. They got married in July 2002, and they were married for five years and five months.

She is survived by her son, Ronald Leppamaki; four step-children, Diane Barber, Vernon (Janet), Paul (Sue), and Carol (Lloyd) Jones; 33 grandchildren; 189 great grandchildren, and many great, great grandchildren; several cousins in Finland and the U.S.; many nieces and nephews in Canada and in the US; and a beloved community of sisters and brothers in faith.

She is preceded in death by her husband Toivo and her husband John, her step-son John, her daughter in law Pauline, four sisters, two brothers, and her parents.

Arrangements are entrusted to Brenny Family Funeral Chapel, Baxter.