The Heiden Family History - Heiden Family of Monroe County, Michigan Website - Includes Rambow, Milhan, Roggerman, Getty, Knaack and Laas Families

On May 28th and September 24th, 1995 different groups of descendents of William Carl and Mary Heiden met to share their family memories. The conversations were recorded and later written transcripts were made. Below are excerpts which relate to this person or topic..

Pictured is what was called a cassette tape back in pre-digital times.



School Days Bridge School Activities		Bridge School Closing Higher Education Bridge School

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!”

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.

Dianne (Heiden) Houpt - Did you get my reply to your E-mail?

Ralph Heiden - Yes. Isn’t that amazing.

Dianne (Heiden) Houpt - Ralph says on his email to me, “This is a long way from the farm, isn’t it? From the farm to email.”

Ralph Heiden - Myrna (Drake) Bishop’s husband, Jim, (left) is a professor at Notre Dame so we have been emailing things back and forth for a while now. It is a local call so it doesn’t cost anything.

(Note: This was in "ancient" times (1995) when internet connections went through a modem and a telephone line. I had a second phone line installed because while you were on the internet, you couldn't get regular phone calls to your land line which is another ancient technology.)

Helen (Henning) Heiden - Who is that now?

Ralph Heiden - That is Bertha (Heiden) Drake’s son-in-law. He is married to Myrna.

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Where is Walter Berns’ daughter? She’s a professor too.

Ralph Heiden - Margie (right) is a professor of linguistics at Purdue University. She has her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.

Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - She got married recently didn’t she?

Ralph Heiden - Yes. I think they are both professors at Purdue. There are also several medical doctors in the family now. Linda’s daughter, Erin, is a doctor. And so is Connie Sedelbauer and she is married to a doctor. She has a pretty responsible position at the University of Michigan Hospital.

Dianne (Heiden) Houpt - That’s where I work and I see her all the time there. She’s partly in our department now. She is so pretty.

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Where is Linda’s daughter a physician at then?

Ralph Heiden - I think she is at the Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis.

Helen (Henning) Heiden - I think both of Linda’s daughters are moving back to Michigan now. Linda mentioned that at the reunion.

Ralph Heiden - It’s also amazing to look at where all the kids have gone to college. Some of Carol’s (Toburen) (left) children went to Millersville University in Pennsylvania. Janice’s (Clark) (right) went to Louisiana Tech and Northeast Louisiana.

Dianne (Heiden) Houpt - That’s interesting because before I came over here today, I went back and looked through all that stuff to see where all my nieces and nephews went to college.

William Frank Heiden - Millersburg. Isn’t that were Mike (Toburen) was taking a class and it turned out the guy teaching wasn’t even a professor. They arrested him and found out he did the same thing somewhere else too.

Helen (Henning) Heiden - Mike said the kids knew more than he did!

Dianne (Heiden) Houpt - Did they shut the Bridge School down at some point?

Ralph Heiden - I think kids went there through the late 1940's before they were bussed to Dundee.

Dianne (Heiden) Houpt - I went a half a year there before going up to Dundee.

Helen (Henning) Heiden - I remember when you (Dianne) were little, you missed the bus once and went running behind it, bawling like mad.

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.

Ralph Heiden - I remember having Wes Feinauer as a driver. One day, I was showing off acting like I wanted to thumb a ride as he pulled up. For some reason he didn’t like that and made me sit in the front seat for a week. I was probably only in the second grade and it scared me.

Dianne (Heiden) Houpt - He came to the back of the bus and escorted me to the front seat one time. I saw him years later and he said he wanted to laugh all the time while he was doing it but didn’t dare in front of the other children.

Ralph Heiden - What do you two (William Frank and Marie) remember about going to Bridge School?

Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - I had Kenneth Bordine the first year I went there and then Harrison Dentel the rest of the way.

William Frank Heiden - We had fifty some kids all together in one room. He would teach one grade at a time. But I really don’t remember much about my childhood.

Helen (Henning) Heiden - Seems funny he doesn’t remember any of his childhood about going to school and stuff.

Brick Tommelein - I agree with William, I just remember a few bits and pieces here and there but not that much.

William Frank Heiden (left) - I remember Fritz Milhan hit me in the head with a ball bat. We would play toss up and he swung and got me good. I didn’t have to go to school for about 3 months!

Ralph Heiden - I have a scar underneath my chin. The teacher used to ring a bell at the end of recess and I was standing too close and she popped me right under the chin.

William Frank Heiden - You should have sued them for that, Ha!

Over the years, we have also received written memories and remembrances about this person or topic from various family members.

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Mildred Heiden	Ralph Heiden	Marie Tommelein	Brick Tommelein


Wm Frank Heiden	Helen Heiden	Dianne Houpt	Mary Lou Opfermann


Wilma Bicking	Pat Klass	Helma Nickel	Jeanie Heiden


Wilma, Jeanie, Wm Frank, Helma & Marie were children of Wm Carl and Mary Heiden Mildred was married to Arthur Heiden, son of Wm Carl and Mary and was mother of Ralph Heiden Helen was wife of Wm Frank and they were parents of Dianne Pat was daughter of Wilma Bicking Mary Lou is daughter of Leo and Lucille Heiden Ralph, Dianne, Pat and Mary Lou were first cousins