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 Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Ask Ralph why he liked to work for Herb bailing hay and
straw in the summers.
Ralph Heiden - For Helma’s great meals! She would put out a wonderful
spread every day at noon when we would come in from the field.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Helma (right) was the best cook!
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - She taught me how to clean house.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I stayed with her one summer when Larry was little. She
taught me how to cook and how to make good gravy.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Well, I learned how to cook and clean at home. I used to
help Ma a lot. Of course, when Jeanie was born, I was 17 years old
and I was practically her mother.
Ma had a heart problem by then and had to take it easier. That’s the
reason Jeanie was the only one of the thirteen kids that was born in
the hospital. She was six weeks early and Ma was weak afterwards for
a while. Jeanie was delivered by Dr. Douglas in St. Vincent’s
Hospital in Toledo. Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Is that what she had, I thought it had something to do with
her kidneys.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - No, it was her heart. |
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Ralph Heiden - My generation has some memories of our grandparents but,
like I said in the letter,
Grandpa was 74 when I was born so there
is a lot of his life I do not remember.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - He was 52 and Ma was 49 when I was born! I don’t remember Ma
and Pa without grey hair.
Pat (Bicking) Klass - I remember Grandpa more than Grandma. We were up to their
house to play more than anything.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - The kids weren’t up there to talk with their grandparents.
 Ralph Heiden - What illnesses did Grandma have toward the end of her life?
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I think it was mostly her heart.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Her death certificate calls it arteriosclerosis. Hardening
of the arteries.
Ralph Heiden - I vaguely remember something about a lung problem.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Yes, she had bronchitis.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Her one lung was almost completely calcified.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Seems like she would get pneumonia about every year.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - They had to put a tube in her lung once to draw out fluids.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I took her to Ann Arbor one time and they came out and said,
“Your mother has one lung completely calcified and the other one is
starting to go. I would say your mother has about 6 months to live.”
Ralph Heiden - When was that?
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - It was about 15 years before she died!
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I took her to a Toledo heart clinic. When he got done
examining her, he called me in the office. He showed me an EKG and
it had a real thin little line. He said, “Now that string, if that
breaks, she is gone. So don’t let her do much work.”
After that, she would lie on the davenport a lot and avoid the heavy
work.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - She would get awfully tired so easy.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Sometimes she would want to bake cookies but she would get
them started and then be too tired to finish them. But that was 15
or 20 years before she died.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - She evidently had pleurisy or something and every year she
would get a cold. And it seemed like her lungs never cleared up.
That calcified in there.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Remember they tapped her side and put a tube in to drain off
that excess.
Ralph Heiden - I had a similar problem when I was 18. My lung collapsed and
I had to have a tube inserted to drain off the excess fluids.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I can remember that Dr. Marin would come over when she had
the colds. He would start her off on sulfa drugs. Then a brown spot
she had on her face would turn a bright red. Then he would switch to
something else. Then he would switch to terramycin and finally clear
it up. I asked him why he always started with something else before
switching to terramycin which always worked. Why not start right out
with terramycin?
He said, “Well, I always start with the weaker stuff before moving
up to the more powerful drugs.”
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 Ralph Heiden - One of the things a lot of people have mentioned is
Grandma’s cooking.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - At least three times a week, she would bake bread.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - She made the best sugar cookies!
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - One time
Art went over to their house and he came back and
said, “Ma’s making bread today. Don’t you think you should go and
help her?” I knew that he just wanted me to go and learn how to make bread like
she did. So, I said, “With all the experience she’s had, I don’t
think she needs my help!” Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - She would make donuts too. The ones I liked best where when
she would make those long stick, long-johns and frost them.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - A lot of the relatives from Toledo like the Laas’ and
Berlin’s would come on Sunday night just in time for dinner.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Always!
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They would come about 4 or 5 p.m. Ma would send us down in
the basement to get some more jars of preserved beef. Boy, that made
the best gravy! Or, she would make some pork sausages and fried
potatoes.
Ralph Heiden - You wonder now about how people make such a big deal out of
eating a pat of butter or having an occasional egg for breakfast
when back then, they ate the fattest meats and sausages.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Ma would save the grease from bacon. Then when you fried
potatoes you would use that grease.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Sometimes they would put that old lard directly onto bread
and eat it like a sandwich! And we worry about eating a little bit
of butter.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Art always talked about taking lard sandwiches to school.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I can remember coming home from school and taking a piece of
fresh bread and putting the bacon grease on it for a snack. Pa used to eat mettwurst and eggs and spicanse for breakfast. Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I can remember him cutting the fat off pork and eating
it. It would make us kids almost sick.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - On Easter Sunday, he would eat six boiled eggs for
breakfast. That was his traditional meal.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - During Lent, we could never go to a dance or to the movies
back then.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - You never got married during Lent either. There were a lot
of February weddings because you had to get married before or after
Lent.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Unless it was a shotgun wedding!
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Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa was pretty lenient about that kind of thing. Ma wasn’t so
easy going. When she said, “No.” she meant it and there would be no
arguing with her. You never asked, “Why not?”
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I did once. Joe Long called and asked if I could go to the
show with him. He was older than I was and I was about 15 or 16 at
the time. I was on the phone with him and turned around to ask Ma if
I could go to the show that night.
She said, “Who with?”
I said, “Joe Long.”
She said, “No.”
I told him I couldn’t go and put down the phone. Then I turned
around and said to Ma, “Why can’t I go?”
She said, “He’s too old for you.”
I shot back, “Well, I’m not going to marry him! I’m just going to go
to the show.”
Man, she gave me a whack and I never asked again!
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Tell them about the time you got kicked out of school and
she had to go up and get you back in.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - A bunch of us including Mary Lou went driving all over
instead of going to school one day. We got back just in time to get
our ride home. Well, somebody saw us leave in the morning and
tattled to the principal. So, in the meantime, before we got home,
they had called to tell Ma. When we got home, she was at the front door and said, “How come your
face is so red?”
I said, “It was hot.”
She replied, “Hot where? In school? You weren’t in school! Professor
Ayris called.”
I said, “Well, everybody skips once in a while.”
The teacher said we couldn’t come back to school unless our parents
came with us. So, Ma and Lou came up with us.
Well I had skipped before one time to go to Tecumseh so I had to
tell her, “Remember that other time when I was sick and didn’t go to
school?”
Those two days I skipped were the only two days I missed in four
years of high school.
Mary Lou, your mother brought this up at a birthday party one time.
She said, “Yes, I remember that. I told Mary Lou that if she ever
did that again, she wasn’t going back to school! She could do
housework.”
In the end, they let us back in and we didn’t even have to make up
our tests or anything. We got our same A’s so it didn’t mean
anything in the end.
It’s funny that you don’t remember all the days you went to school,
but you do remember the days you skipped.
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We went to Cleary College one day with our class. There were
about 5 or 6 of us in our car. When the rest of them went back to
Dundee to school, well, we didn’t follow.
We just rode around all day. We stopped and had some pop and stuff
and just had a big time. Just like you, we got back just in time to
catch our ride home.
Next morning, we got called down to the office. The principal told
us to all to meet down by the huge French doors in the front of the
school.
When we got there, they had glass cleaner and rags for us. We spent
the next several hours washing those windows. I never washed so many
windows in my life!
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We would have gladly washed windows in exchange for not
telling our parents.
I thought Pa would have a fit and make me stay home from school when
he heard about it. All he did was start calling me, “Skippy!”
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[Looking at old family reunion pictures
from the 1920's]
 Brick Tommelein -
Mother
(Mary) Heiden (right) was a tall woman. It didn’t seem like it at
the time but when you look at her in these pictures, she seems quite
tall.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - All the
Rambows were big people.
Ralph Heiden - In this one old picture that guy with the hat and string tie
looks like he just got back from the wild west.
Helen (Henning) Heiden - He looks like Wyatt Earp!
Ralph Heiden - This was about 1921 or so, I think.
William Frank Heiden - Maybe that was old
Bill Laas from Texas. He might look
like that.
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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.
Wilma, Jeanie, Wm Frank, Helma & Marie were
children of 
