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Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - When we lived with
Grandma and Grandpa, I can remember
having to come down to the living room whenever there was a thunder
storm.
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Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - He was always afraid that he wouldn’t be able to get us down
from upstairs if the house was ever hit by lightning. So, in the
middle of the night, if a storm came up, we had to get dressed and
come down and sit together in the living room until the storm was
over.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We had to get dressed since we were not allowed to come
downstairs in our night clothes. That’s the way us kids were raised.
When Marie got married and the first storm came along, she woke
Brick up in the middle of the night and said, “Get your pants on and
get downstairs.” He came into the living room and asked, “What’s wrong? Where are we
going?” Marie said, “Don’t be smart! We’re not going anyplace. It’s
storming.” Brick said, “Oh, for crying out loud.” and went back to bed.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - It seems like we used to have more serious storms back then
too.
 Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Remember the balls of lightning that would come right
through the telephone lines and into the house?
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - It did that once when we lived at Suchik’s. The lightning
came right through the phone and blew it clear across the kitchen.
It was a wonder that one of the girls wasn’t talking on the phone at
the time.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Edna used to be very concerned about electrical storms. I
used to stay up there with them sometimes.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - That was probably because they didn’t have any electric
lights. They just had a kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling.
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - When Henry (Rambow)
(right) would blow that lamp out, it went pitch black in
the house. You could hear the sheep “baa” out in the barnyard in the
night. I used to lay there in the back bedroom saying to myself, “I
hope it gets to be morning soon!” That was really scary.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - How about the time while
Helen, Wilma, Marie and Helma were
all still at home. Helma and Marie went out on dates one night.
Helma and Wilma were supposed to sleep together and Helen, Marie and
I shared a bed. I always had to sleep in the middle. We were scaredy cats so we talked Wilma into sleeping with us. When
the others came home, Marie climbed in too so we ended up with four
of us packed like sardines in one bed and Helma by herself in the
other. |
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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 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) children went to Millersville
University in Pennsylvania.
Janice's (Clark) 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 where 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!
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 Ralph Heiden - That is the only five generation picture taken with Grandpa
Heiden.
Helen (Henning) Heiden - Who is that then?
Ralph Heiden - There’s
Edna, Walter, Lauren, Grandpa and Lauren’s first
son, Sean. Walter made me this nice print since he still had the
negative.
Marie (Heiden) Tommelein -
Denny
got us an old newspaper for 1945, the year we were
married. It was fun to look through but sometimes you’d look at a
price and say, “God, it couldn’t have been that cheap back then!”
 I remember the first year after we were married, bread was still
rationed after the war. We had a neighbor who used to go and stand
in line to get a loaf of bread. She would take her 16 year old
daughter along with our ration stamp and get us a loaf too. I was at
home with the baby and couldn’t go.
You had to wait in line at the Kroger store to get a loaf of bread.
Helen (Henning) Heiden - We only had one car in those days too so you couldn’t just
go when you wanted to either.
Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - No. You were lucky if you had one car!
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 William Frank Heiden - There was another
small house down the road on the east
end of the
Wakefield farm and that is where Mary Lou was born. They
had that little house for the guy who worked the farm to live in.
Wakefield lived where Jesse Barnes lived and they didn’t want to
work the farm. Old man Wakefield gave me a cow on the condition that
I would give them some of the milk. I used to take over a couple of
quarts a day to them.
When Wakefield died, he gave me a gold watch and he left
Art a horse
and buggy.
Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - That was a nice watch.
William Frank Heiden - Here it is. I still have it.
Brick Tommelein - Does it run, William?
William Frank Heiden - Yes we had the movement replaced. It’s got a porcelain
dial.
 Helen (Henning) Heiden - We took it down to a jeweler to see how much it might be
worth in case somebody might break in and take it. They told us it’s
not pure gold because it wears off over time.
William Frank Heiden - I’ve had it seventy years and I rarely carry it in my
pocket yet it’s all worn off. Old Wakefield must have carried it for
a long time before he died.
Brick Tommelein - Some of those old railroad watches used to be worth
something.
Ralph Heiden - Why did Mr. Wakefield leave things to you boys?
William Frank Heiden - Well, we always waited on him and did things for him all
the time.
Brick Tommelein - Mil, was that when
Art started courting you when he had that
buggy?
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - No, he had an old Model T Ford by the time we starting
going out.
Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - Remember we used to play tricks on old Wakefield? It was
after we got a telephone. When Ma and Pa would be gone, we would
watch to see when he was outside and then we’d call him up. As soon
as he got in the house, we’d hang up. Later he would tell Pa,
“Somebody kept calling me all day today. By the time I got there,
they’d hang up!”
Ralph Heiden - I didn’t think you guys did that kind of stuff.
Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - Oh, yes we did but Pa never knew it. |
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Listed
below are excerpts from transcriptions of audio tapes of
two meetings with different combinations of the people
shown here. They occurred on May 28 and September 25,
1995. For the entire script,
