According to the 1930 census, Art Heiden was living at the Fred Degner farm on Dunbar Road just north of Ida, Michigan. He was working there as a farm labor and was 18 years old. Sixteen year old, Mildred Roggerman was living with her father, Ralph Raymond Roggerman and her brothers, Bob and Kenneth in Dundee, Michigan about 10 miles away.

Somewhere, perhaps at a dance, these two young people met, courted and were married on March 3, 1934. The ceremony was performed by a Justice of the Peace in Monroe, Michigan. Mildred was 19 and Arthur was 21 at the time.

They took up residence in a house at 207 Rawson Street in Dundee and later that year their first child, Harold was born. During their married life, Art and Mildred would move seven more times including living in one house twice. All of the houses were within just a few miles of each other. All but three of them were on Dixon Road.

By 1938, they were located at 134 Ida Maybee Road on the corner with Dixon Road. This was where their second child, Joyce, was born in 1938. This house was about 1/3 of a mile east of the home of Art's parents who lived at 8861 Dixon Road. That was where he had been born and raised. It was also about 150 yards west of Bridge School where Art and all his siblings, parents and three of his children attended.

At this time, Art was still working as a farm laborer. At the end of the decade, he began working at the Butler farm near where Dixon Road and South Custer Road merge together.
 

As was the custom of many families that originated in Germany, the Lutheran church played a big role in their lives. Art went through Sunday school and catechism at St Matthew Lutheran Church in Raisinville Township in Monroe County about a mile and a half from his parents' home. After their marriage, he and Mildred continued as members until St Matthew merged with St Mark's Lutheran Church in Ida and became Prince of Peace Lutheran Church. A new church for the joined congregations was built on Lewis Avenue just north of Ida.

All of their children were baptized and confirmed from St Matthew. They all participated in the annual manger play at the church service on Christmas Eve. For many years after this service, all the relatives would gather at the home of William Carl and Mary (Rambow) Heiden for a party. A gift was given to each child and the adults played cards or spent the evening catching up with each other.

Art and Mildred and their stillborn son are all buried in the cemetery behind the church which is now used by a Baptist congregation..

In the early part of this decade, Art was working and living on the Butler Farm when their third child, Ronald was born in 1942. We do not know the exact address of the house where they lived and it may have been torn down since then.

Sometime early in the 40s, Art got a job as an arc welder at the Monroe Auto Equipment factory in Monroe.

Later in the decade, Art and Mildred moved to what was known as the C.J. Rath farm at 9450 Dixon Road about half a mile west of his parent's farm. While living here, their fourth child, Ralph was born in 1948.
 

Throughout their married life, one of the main social activities was to get together with friends and relatives to play cards. Most of the time, the evening was filled with laughter and games of euchre or clubs trump followed by a light lunch of sandwiches and potato chips. The young children would play together or watch TV in the living room and be treated to a bottle of pop or two and snacks. About 11:00 or 11:30 p.m. after the lunch was finished, they would all pile into the car and head home.

Art and Mildred had a wide circle of friends and relatives who they would visit or receive on a Friday or Saturday night for cards. Those relatives who they visited quite regularly over the course of the years would include Art's parents, William Carl and Mary Heiden, his brother, William Frank and Helen Heiden, his father-in-law, Ralph Raymond Roggerman and his wife Edith, his cousin, Henry "Heinie" and Dorothy Heiden, his cousin, Florence "Maggie" (Heiden) and Harold "Butch" Miller, his cousin, Wm Leo "Bill" and Alice Heiden and his niece, Donna Mae (Heiden) Burge and her first husband, Howie Sedlebauer.

Relatives they would occasionally visit would include his sister, Wilma (Heiden) and William "Bill" Bicking, his sister, Marie (Heiden) and Morris "Brick" Tommelein, his brothers, Leo and Lucille Heiden and Lester and Lila Heiden.

Friends included Norman and Ivadell Boldt, Elmo and Vivian Dean and Louis and Ada Schweiger

According to the 1950 census, they were still living at the C.J. Rath farm at 9450 Dixon (left) but shortly into the decade, they moved about a mile or so west on Dixon Road to the Laskey farm The address was 12444 and the road was still unpaved at that time.

On April 3, 1951, they suffered a great loss when a stillborn baby boy was delivered at St Vincent Hospital in Toledo, Ohio. The child was stricken with spina bifida which occurs when the spinal cord does not form properly. He was buried at the St Matthew Lutheran Church cemetery in Raisinville Township, Monroe County, Michigan.

At the Laskey farm they milked cows twice a day and raised their own beef and chickens. Art continued to work at Monroe Auto Equipment. Like most of the properties on Dixon Road where they lived, the Raisin River flowed on the north side of the farm.

To the east of them at the next farm lived Mildred's cousin, Florence Toburen and her family. Harold, Joyce, Ronald and Ralph caught the bus either in front of the house or a few yards away at the corner of Alford Road to ride to school in Dundee.

Harold graduated from DHS in 1953 and got married in 1954 to Carol Boos of Monroe.

In 1954, their sixth child, Kay, was born in Mercy Hospital in Monroe. Mildred was 40 years old at the time of the birth. Their first grandchild, Thomas, was born in 1956.

Around 1956, Mr. Laskey decided to sell the farm but Art did not feel he could buy it at that time so, instead, he purchased a very small house at 8864 Dixon Road. This was located directly across the road from his parents' house. At the time, it had just three rooms including a kitchen, living room and one bedroom with an outhouse. Art added two bedrooms to the east side of the house and indoor plumbing. The bathroom was in the original bedroom with a curtain to separate the two.

Art and Mildred's last child, Gail, was born in 1958 when Mildred was 44 years old. Joyce, who graduated from DHS in 1955, had been married in 1957 so at the end of the decade the household consisted of Art, Mildred, Ron, Ralph, Kay and Gail. By late 1960, they had two grandchildren.

Mildred, as was the custom of those days, cooked all the meals, seven days a week. Occasionally, however, the family would "go out to eat" but that did not necessarily mean going to a restaurant. Often it meant going to a local beer garden for hamburger and fries. In the late 1950s or early 60s, an A&W Root Beer stand opened in Dundee with service at the car window. It was a treat to go there and have a chilli dog.

In those years, Catholic people were not supposed to eat red meat on Friday night. So, places like the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) in Dundee would have a fish fry on certain Fridays. They would generally serve perch which had been caught in nearby Lake Erie. Sometimes Art would load his family in the car and have a night out.
 

During their life together, Art and Mil enjoyed having a good time. Wedding receptions in the family or with friends were usually loud and full of fun. Many of them occurred at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall in Dundee or other halls around the county. A typical affair would have a great buffet meal, plenty of beer and a local band.

A local farmer, Russ Hanson, had a four piece band that would play dance music from the early part of the 20th century. He was also an excellent square dance caller who could get everyone to "swing your partner round and around!" Even though Art was significantly taller than Mildred, they still made a good accounting of themselves on the dance floor. Square dance or Fox Trot, they were a nice looking couple.

The picture above is not from the Heiden family.
 

Although there was plenty of work to keep everyone busy, there was also plenty of time for recreation. The places on Dixon Road where the family lived for the bulk of the time all bordered on the Raisin River. It was a place where the children could fish during the spring and summer and ice skate or play hockey in the winter after an adult determined that it was safe. There were times when we had to cut a slice off the end of a broken bat to make a hockey puck. It was then wrapped in athletic tape and worked just fine for our purposes.

In the spring, the boys would use dip nets to catch spawning northern pike. Mildred would filet them and have a nice meal or two.

Hunting pheasants, rabbits and squirrels was the activity of the autumn. Art had a double barrel 12 gage shotgun and the boys each had their own guns. Fresh pheasant was a delicious meal but you needed to watch out for the lead pellets.

Every large barn in the area seemed to have a place with a basketball hoop. A floodlight bulb placed just right would illuminate the area for night games. We could weave together a netting out of twine from hay bales to cover open areas to prevent the ball from leaving the court and falling downstairs.

Baseball was the big sport of the time and every farm yard had some sort of space for a ball game. Hitting a ball over the roof of the barn was usually considered a home run. Special wooded shutters could cover the windows on the barn to prevent breakage.

An activity that Mildred enjoyed was gathering together with a few friends and relatives to have a quilting bee. They had a large wooden frame and they would all work in their space putting random pieces of cloth into beautiful and useful quilts. Most rural houses were not uniformly heated and winter nights could get very cold indeed.

In 1960, Art's brother, Willam Frank Heiden, purchased the home farm from their father. He had been renting the Suchik farm at 8420 Dixon Road about 1/4 mile east of their parents' farm. So, William and his family moved back to the home farm and Art and his family moved down the road to the Suchik farm to start a new decade.

Art and the boys farmed while he continued to work at Monroe Auto Equipment. Unfortunately, to get away from union labor the factory moved to the South leaving Art without a job. He then worked for a short time at Wolverine Fabricating which was located in the Old Mill on the Raisin River in Dundee. Later he was employed by Dundee Products where he continued until his retirement.

In addition to the Suchik farm, Art and his sons, rented the Albert Miller farm on South Custer Road and a farm on the north side of the Raisin River. During the 60s, he also rented the Irish farm on Dixon Road.

Ron graduated from DHS in 1960 and got married in 1964. Ralph graduated from DHS in 1966 and attended Michigan State University. At the end of the decade, they had a total of nine grandchildren.
 

Starting about 1920, the Heiden Family held a big reunion yearly with only a few exceptions. In the 1950s most of these were held at the Grange Hall in nearby Grape, Michigan. Most of them in the 1960s took place at the Ida Firemen's Park in Ida, Michigan and these tended to center around the children and descendants of William Carl and Mary Heiden.

Art, Mildred and their children regularly attended these events which were usually held on the Fourth of July. They included socializing, a nice meal, sports and children's games and always a few card games for the adults. In the afternoon, a couple of large insulated containers would magically appear and everyone would have an ice cream cone...or two. Art and Mil worked on some of the family committees that organized the well attended event.

Later into the 70s, the attendance went down and smaller reunions were held at family homes or at the Stowell School on Dixon Road.

Around 1970, Art, Mildred, Kay and Gail moved back to 8864 Dixon Road. They added an enclosed front porch to the house at that time.

Kay graduated from DHS in 1972. Gail graduated in 1976 and was married later that year. Ralph graduated from college in 1970 and was married that summer.

Art retired in the late 1970s and he and Mildred continued to live on Dixon Road. By then, their grandchildren total had grown to ten.

Art and Mildred were busy raising children on their limited income so they rarely travelled away from Monroe County. However, there were a few occasions when they hit the road.

From a picture that we have, it appears that Mildred visited Niagara Falls with her brother, Ervin Roggerman and his wife, Francis. From the vintage of the clothing and other factors, it would seem that the trip took place in the early 1930s before she married Art.

We also have a picture of Art sitting on a picnic table in front of a tent. It looks as if he might be at a deer hunting camp in northern Michigan...but we don't know for sure.

In the 1950s, Harold lived in Sandusky, Ohio for a number of years. He rented for a while and then built a new house, much of it by himself. Art, Mildred and the kids would occasionally take Rte 2 for the 90 mile trip. There were no expressways in those days. On one trip, Harold took everyone for a picnic at a small park which turned out to be Cedar Point. At that time, it was just a typical amusement park with a few rides and was nothing like the huge facility that exists today.

Over the Christmas season of 1973 and 1974, Art and Mildred accompanied their son, Ralph on trips to Florida. It was their first travel outside of Michigan and Ohio and they visited relatives including Art's brother Lester and his wife, Lila, who spent the winters in Florida.

In 1987, Mildred accompanied her daughter, Joyce and her husband, to San Diego, California to attend her granddaughter, Jill's, graduation from Point Loma Nazarene University.

On June 18, 1985, Art died at the age of 72 at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. He was buried in the cemetery of St Matthew Lutheran Church in Raisinville Township, Monroe County, Michigan about two miles from the house where he was born and raised.

Later in the decade, Mildred moved to an apartment in the senior citizens complex in Dundee. After that, she moved to a long term care facility in Monroe where she lived until she died on July 3, 2012 just two months shy of her 98th birthday. She passed away at Monroe Hospital and is buried next to Art at St Matthew cemetery.

Mildred and Art left behind six children, 13 grandchildren and more than 13 great-grandchildren at the time of her death.