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Ralph Heiden - What did Grandpa Heiden do for a living? Didn’t he work as a
carpenter in addition to farming?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - He worked for
Henry Milhan as a carpenter sometimes. I know
he helped build a couple of houses over on Lewis Avenue as you go
into Ida. The Sheid house and one for the Feinauers, I think. He
also worked on Ed Miller’s place too.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I remember them building that front porch on the house (8861 Dixon Road pictured above). They
laid the blocks and built it form the ground up.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa didn’t get a lot of schooling but he was very good with
math.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - He only went through the sixth grade at Bridge School (left). But,
if he were going to put barley in the bin, he could sit down and
figure out how many bushels there were to go in. He could figure out
most anything.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - When we had math problems from school, he could always help
us out. People were intelligent without necessarily having to go to
school for a long time. |
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 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I only went to the Bridge School for seven years. When I
started there,
Harrison Dentel was the teacher. All the classes were
together in the same room. I was the only one in the first grade so
he moved me up with the second graders. So, when it came to the end
of the year, he passed me on to the third grade. So I kept going and
graduated from the eighth grade when I was thirteen.
Ralph Heiden - The Heidens overall seem like a pretty sharp bunch of
people. I haven’t found too many who are down and out.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Wilma was third in her high school class.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Jeanie was Salutatorian of hers.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Yeah, I had to work real hard to beat Wilma. Then, when I
had to give the speech at graduation, I was wishing I had been
third.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Professor Ayris said he thought I should have gotten
Salutatorian because the girl who got it had transferred in from
another school. He said that the records from that school said that
she had gotten all A’s and there was nothing he could do about. He
wanted to make me class Historian so I could give a speech too but I
said, “No thank you!”
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - When Wilma was in the fourth grade, she won the county
spelling bee against everyone, even the eighth graders and won all
those medals.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I remember the day of an assembly in Monroe High School
auditorium when they asked, “Is Wilma Heiden in the audience?” I
stood up and they started clapping but the announcer said, “Where is
she? I can’t see her.” Finally, I had to get up on my chair and
everybody started cheering.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Harrison Dentel
(left) wanted me to get into the spelling bee
because Wilma had won it but I was too bashful for that stuff.
Ralph Heiden - A lot of the Heidens went to Bridge School. It went from
kindergarten to eighth grade. How many students would there be at
the school in the average year?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Oh, about fifty or sixty. Harrison Dental would be the only
teacher.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We were all in the same room together. Everybody would be
sitting at their desks and he would call up one class at a time to
work on their lessons.
That used to help the younger ones, I think. We would sit back there
and, when we were in the second grade, we would get done with our
work and then listen to the third grade go through their lesson. By
the time you got there the next year, you pretty well knew most of
it already.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - By the time we got to the seventh or eighth grade, we
would be allowed to help with the first graders and teach them.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I can still remember that old Regulator clock on the wall.
It made a loud “Tick! Tick! Tick” sound!
 Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - The teacher had a length of rubber hose in his desk. And,
boy, he would use it too!
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - He would be teaching another class up front in the room but,
if you turned around to talk to someone, he would spot you. All of a
sudden, “Whop!”, he would snap you behind the head with the hose.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - He wore those big, black high top shoes and he would walk on
the balls of his feet.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - He always tiptoed around.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We always called him, “Tippy toes!”
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Ralph Heiden
- What kind of activities did they have at Bridge School. Did
they have plays or recitals?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I was in a play one time. I got up and said, “We will now
sing Fiddely Dee for YOU!” During practices, the teacher would
always tell me to emphasize the “you” at the end.
  Wilma (Heiden) Bicking
(left) & Norma "Jeanie" Heiden (right) -
(start singing together)
Fiddley Dee
Fiddley Dee
The fly has married the bumble bee.
The fly to the bee
Will you marry me?
And live with me,
Sweet bumble bee.
Fiddley Dee
Fiddley Dee
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Boy, you’re memory is still good to remember all that stuff!
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - And then we’d sing The Old Grandfather’s Clock.
(Everyone singing together) -
“And it stopped short,
Never to go again.
When the old man died.”
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - We had parent-teachers meetings way back then too. I
remember I was in the second grade and we all had to get up and say
a nursery rhyme. I played the part of Jack Sprat in the rhyme about
Jack Sprat could eat no fat.
That is when Leo gave me the nickname, Jack. He had a nickname for
everyone.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - So that’s where that came from, I remember him calling
you Jack.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We always had music at school. Harrison Dentel played the
piano and we had the old Golden Song Books.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I still have a copy that we bought at a yard sale. We used
to sing out of that every morning at Bridge School.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I have the 100th Anniversary Book for Bridge School if you
would like to see it sometime, Ralph.
Ralph Heiden - When you reached the end of the eighth grade, then what?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - People back then always thought that 8th grade was enough
schooling for anyone.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - You didn’t have to go on to high school in those days. I was
the first one in our family to go.
Harrison Dentel came to the house when I finished the 8th grade. He
said, “She’s only twelve years old. What is she going to do here at
home? She should go on to high school.”
Pa didn’t like the idea at all.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden -
Art wanted to go on to high school so bad too. But when he
was in 8th grade, they wouldn’t even let him go to Ida to take the
entrance exam.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They thought going to high school was foolishness. But
finally, Harrison Dental talked and talked to them about Wilma and
they gave in.
Then, when my time came several years later, I had to beg and beg.
Pa said, “All Wilma learned up there was foolishness. Going to
parties and such foolishness.” But, they finally gave in and I got
to go.
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I was in the class play my junior and senior years.
Elizabeth Johnson lived across the river and she would come to pick
me up to take me to practice. When it was time for the play, they
asked if my mother and dad were coming. I had to say, “No.” I
wouldn’t have thought about asking them. Pa would have thought that
it was really a lot of nonsense.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Back when I would have gone, you would have had to pay
tuition to go to high school. The pastor’s kids were going to go and
I could have gone with them but I would have had to walk to the
parsonage to catch the ride every day.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Our road was mud at that time and we often had to walk to
the corner to get a ride somewhere. You could usually get down to
where Henry and Edna lived. When I started working at River Raisin Paper, I rode with John
Beaudrie and I had to meet him down at the corner at 6:30 every
morning. Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I remember one Christmas Eve, everybody who came over for
the party got stuck on the road. They had to get the tractor out and
pull everybody out of the mud.
Ralph Heiden - Did you get snowed in very often back then?
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Oh, I can remember walking down the ditches that were
full of snow.
  Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We would still walk to the
Bridge School no matter how deep
the snow was then. It used to get a crust on top and it would be up
as high as the fence posts. We would walk across that and have a lot
of fun. There were always a bunch of us on the way to and from school each
day.
There would be
Walter
(left) and
Lavern Berns,
(right) Lloyd Rath, Junior
Barnaby and Harry Karney. There would be a whole gang of us. I
remember hitting Junior Barnaby over the head with my lunch
bucket. He fell down and I thought I really hurt him but he was
O.K.
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 Over
the years, we have also received written memories and
remembrances about this person or topic from various family
members. |
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Pictured
is what was called a cassette tape back in pre-digital
times.
Dianne (Heiden) Houpt - Did they shut the
Dianne (Heiden) Houpt - Ralph, do you remember that we started out with the red,
white and blue buses and then the yellow ones came along later. At
school, they never seemed to line them up the same place every
night. They would line up in the order that the drivers happened to
pull up. Some nights, we would get lost.
William Frank Heiden
(left) - I remember
Wilma, Jeanie, Wm Frank, Helma & Marie were
children of 
