LIVERMORE — In a time when marriages more often than not end in divorce, Linda and Lou Lyman have been married almost 56 years and credit several things for their longevity as a couple.

“We took our vows seriously,” Linda said during an interview Friday, Feb. 9. “Trust. After 55 years, you have to trust, I guess. We always talk things out, we never argue.”

“Whenever we do anything, no matter what it involves, we always discuss it before and afterwards,” Lou noted.

Linda and Lou both attended Livermore Falls High School. “He was ahead of me,” she said. “I always saw his senior class picture up on the wall. We met in church finally.”

That was in 1965, they married June 1, 1968, Lou said.

For their honeymoon, they went to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island on the Blue Nose Ferry. “We went all around there,” Linda said. “It’s pretty over there.”

Linda was a Hinkley, and lived on the farm up on the hill.

“I was born at my grandparents’ place in North Leeds,” Lou said. “I was brought up in East Livermore. My parents moved up to East Livermore right across from the Grange hall.”

Linda is the sixth generation of Hinkleys. She was born in what is now an apartment house. “At the time a nurse, Mildred Hiltz was there,” she noted. “My mother went down there.”

The Lymans have lived in the same home since 1968. “At the time we were being married, we were in the process of buying it,” Lou stated. “We moved in the end of June 1968.”

After high school, Linda went to Maine School of Commerce, worked at Pineland Hospital in New Gloucester for two or three years. “After we were married, I worked at Livermore Falls Trust,” she said. Their son Donald was born in 1973 and she stopped working.

“When I graduated from high school in 1956 they were having a draft in the service and I didn’t want to be drafted so I enlisted in the Navy,” Lou said. “I spent four years at sea. I spent my time on the East coast, the Atlantic Ocean.”

While in the Navy, Lou saw icebergs at both the North and South Poles.

“In 1958 our squadron escorted Queen Elizabeth and President Eisenhower through the Great Lakes for the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway,” he noted. He has certificates for being a salt water and fresh water sailor.

Lou made stops in Rio De Janiero, England, Goose Bay Labrador and Cuba while in the Navy. While near the southern end of South America, the prevailing westerly waves were running at least 50 feet high, he noted. “Once in a while you would get a big one,” he said. “Coming back, we lost a man overboard by a rogue wave. We stayed there three days trying to find him. but we never found him. His name was George Hill.”

When he got out of the service, Lou was employed at the Otis Mill. “I worked there 35 years as an electrician,” he said.

The couple are caretakers for their folks.

Their son is not married. Daughter Elizabeth is divorced, has three children: Alivia, Ava and Grayson. Once living in Ohio, the family has been living with Lou and Linda for six and a half years.

Lou joined the North Livermore Baptist Church in 1965. Lou and three other men formed the North Livermore Baptist Men’s Quartet. “Linda played the piano for us,” he noted. “We sang in that capacity for 35 years. We sang around the state, Augusta, China Lake.”

After the group dissolved the Lymans joined a country bluegrass band.

“Blue Mountain Country first,” Linda said. “Then the one that was the head of it, he didn’t want to do it anymore, so we changed our name to A and E Hill Country Music. Austin and Elaine Marden were the A and E.”

“We sang together as a group for 13 years,” Lou noted. “Then Austin couldn’t sing anymore.”

Lou played the harmonica and guitar, Linda played the autoharp and harmonized. “We both sang in those groups,” she said.

Linda has been the church organist since 1964, the choir director and treasurer for 30 something years. While there are older members of the congregation, she is the [longest] living member of the church.

“I joined as a teenager around 1964, have been going there all my life,” she noted.

Linda’s mother was choir director, her grandmother was the treasurer. “The Hinkleys have always been involved,” she said.

Lou has been head trustee at the church for years and the financial secretary since 1982. “Every Sunday I lead the singing for the congregation in the church,” he said.

Lou has been sexton for the cemetery in Livermore Falls since 2004. He is curator of the Livermore Falls Historical Society. Linda is treasurer for both.

The Lymans share many hobbies. They snowmobile and ride ATVs together.

“My son and I between us, we have 14 antique snowmobiles,” Lou said. “I’ve got a ’73 Chevrolet Caprice that is an antique car. We ride that around once in a while. We bought that new at the time.”

“It even climbed Mt. Washington,” Linda stated.

Lou collects bullets, marbles and model trains. Linda, who once collected sea shells, likes to take pictures.

“We like to go to the sea coast, have clams and lobsters,” Linda stated. “That is slowing down now, but we used to do it quite a bit.”

“We like to go to Bailey Island, part of my family is from there,” Lou said. “My great uncle and his son were lobstering one day and they got caught in a rogue wave and they both drowned, 1947 that was. We still like to go down there, although you can’t walk the beaches much. Everything is so crowded with camps, private properties and everything else, but we still do it.”

“We like to go on train rides,” Linda said. “The 470 Railroad club, they have train excursions. Occasionally we go on them.”

“We go to Conway, NH, for that,” Lou noted. “We ride up through the mountains on a train, the Conway Scenic Railway. We try to go there once a year, usually for the fall tour.”

“The fall foliage season, it’s pretty,” Linda added.

Lou enjoyed brook fishing, but there are fewer places available for that today.

Lou hunted all his life, recently gave it up. He said he got his share of deer. Now they watch the deer under the apple trees on their property.

“My father belonged to a rifle club,” Lou said. “He got me my first rifle at 13 years old and I shot for years in a rifle club. Our principal was head of the rifle club in school. I used to take a rifle to school. They wouldn’t let us do that now.”

“We used to go out to eat or something for Valentine’s Day,” Linda said. “We are home bodies now.”

Linda and Lou might not celebrate Valentine’s Day anymore, but their involvement in church and their hobbies keep them busier than many people are today.

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