Arthur Henry Carl was born on Thursday, August 29, 1912 in the
family house in
Raisinville Township. He was the 8th of the 13
children born to William Carl and Mary (Rambow) Heiden.
Art spent his early years working on the
family farm with his brothers and sisters. In those days, draft
horses were used to till the fields and Art had his favorites.
He found time to play a little baseball in the meadows and to
hunt pheasants in the fall. He attended the Bridge School through the eighth grade.
On March 3, 1934, Art married
Mildred
Mae Roggerman from Dundee. Mildred was born on Friday, September
4, 1914. She was a 1931 graduate of
Dundee High School. Over the next
24 years, they became parents of 7 children, 4 boys and 3 girls.
One child, a boy, died shortly after birth in 1951.
After their marriage, Art worked on
farms including the Butler farm on South Custer Road. In the
1930's, he got a job as a welder at the
Monroe Auto Equipment
Company where he worked for 29 years until the early 1960's.
When the factory moved out of town, Art worked for a few years
at the Wolverine Fabricating factory in Dundee on the site of
the historic Ford Mill plant on the Raisin River. He finished
his working years with 10 years at Dundee Products, retiring in
1977.
In addition to working in the factory,
Art always farmed on land he rented from others. In the late
1940's and early 50's he milked cows and worked the Harold
Laskey Farm at
12444 Dixon Road. near the corner of Alford Road.
After Mr. Laskey died in the mid-1950's, the family moved to a
small house at
8864 Dixon
Road, across from the family
homestead.
After
William F. and Helen (Henning) Heiden left the Shucik farm at 8420 Dixon
Road to return to the family home
farm, Art and his family rented the farm. They lived there until
the mid-1970's when they moved back to the house at 8864 Dixon
where Art lived until his death in 1985.
At times, Art rented land on several
other farms in the area including the Albert Miller place on
South Custer, the Fuller farm on Alford Road and the Irish farm
on Dixon Road. From the mid-1940's on, the family lived in a
total of 4 different houses all located on Dixon Road.
Mildred kept very busy raising the
children and attending to the house. She enjoyed crocheting,
cross word puzzles and participating in quilting bees where she
and others pieced together bits of cloth to form beautiful
quilts. In her "spare" time, she developed the skill for hanging
wall paper using the flour paste commonly used in those days.
Art and Mil enjoyed playing cards with
their friends and relatives. It was not unusual to find them
playing euchre or clubs with another couple around the kitchen
table on a Friday or Saturday night. They both enjoyed following
the Detroit Tigers. Art often joined a bus load of parishioners
from St Matthew Lutheran Church to attend "Lutheran Night" at the old
Briggs Stadium during the 1950's.
Arthur Heiden passed away on June 18,
1985 at the age of 72 after suffering the effects of emphysema
for a number of years. He is buried in the cemetery at
St
Matthew Lutheran Church on Ida-Maybee Road.