Sean C. Morgan
The Friends of the Library and Sweet Home Public Library will bid ado to longtime volunteer Erika Heyden this year when she and her husband move to Salem.
Residents of Sweet Home since 1977, they plan to move to a retirement home in Salem next summer.
Heyden has been involved with the library since 1985. She was appointed Friends treasurer in 1986.
“We moved here from Torrence, Calif., in 1977 because we wanted to retire,” Heyden said. “We had to retire because my husband had a heart attack.”
Her husband, Edgar, is a retired sheet metal foreman. Mrs. Heyden volunteered in schools and was a housewife while rearing their two girls and boy.
The Heydens built a ranch in the Liberty area. They quit raising cattle after a 1992 fire destroyed their barn.
A stranger in the area, Heyden got involved in the library and Friends. The president at the time, Louise, “hands me the checkbook, and I’m still holding it. Actually two years ago, I gave it to Gretchen Schaleger.”
She could handle the treasure’s job in 1986, but the Friends have gotten so successful at raising money for the library, “I couldn’t handle it because I didn’t have a computer,” Heyden said. “She (Schaleger) is very thorough. She does a very good job.”
Heyden kept at it so many years “because there was nobody else that wanted the job,” she said. “I enjoyed it, and I was eager to get things done.”
Heyden’s work began with the Friends’ annual Christmas greenery sale. It went on to make money every year, then the Friends added their annual book sale and later a second. That later turned into the Friends of the Library Bookstore, which offers used books.
Every time the Friends raised more money, all of it would be spent on the library. The Friends started buying shelving, clocks, videos new books and anything else the library might need but could not afford. One hundred percent of the Friends’ work goes to support the library.
The bookstore is doing well, Heyden said. “When Gretchen reads the treasurer’s report, it’s fantastic.”
The Heydens moved to the United States from Germany following World War II. Mr. Heyden was a soldier in the German regular army. Mrs. Heyden was just 18 at the end of the war.
She talked about her experiences during and after the war.
The history books on World War II in the library are “very accurate,” Mrs. Heyden said. No one wants to admit it, but Hitler did so well because the choice was between Nazis and communism.
“Even the pope was for Hitler,” Heyden said. Even he knew that communism would end the church in Germany.
Heyden started school in 1932 as Hitler was saying, “Give me four years, and you won’t recognize Germany. In the time of four years, there wasn’t a hungry person in the whole country. Everybody had a place to work or a place to live.”
The Nazi Party brought big highways and public works projects. The public thought it was wonderful.
“We didn’t know his other ideas,” Heyden said. “He got crazy.”
On the other hand, “I wish people would learn from their mistakes,” Heyden said.
Heyden grew up in Niesky near Goerlitz, 200 kilometers south of Berlin. She fled her home with her mother before the Russian army arrived. She ended up in Bavaria, inside the American Sector.
A month or two after she fled, she met her husband in Rehaulof. He was passing through, and she met him at a movie. They walked around a bit and met again the next day. She never heard from him before he was made a prisoner of war in May, 1945.
In October that year, her father, who had been a British POW, came home.
“He said, well if our house is still standing, we might go back,” Heyden said. Heyden had a friend who had traveled back and forth into the Russian sector a few times. She was planning to sneak back, and Heyden went with her.
“I wish I never did,” Heyden said. “That house was a mess.”
Russians had been living in the two-story home and trashed the place. They were from far eastern Russian and had no idea what a toilet was. They used it as a place to wash potatoes.
She sneaked back to Bavaria. There she received a card from Edgar, now an American POW, telling her to go to his parents’ home in Hamburg. She didn’t go. Two months later, she received another card from him telling her to go again. She went ahead, taking a week by train to reach Hamburg, a trip that normally took two days.
Germany was under a 6 p.m. curfew at the time. Travelers caught in a train station after that had to stay at the station. In the morning, if they were lucky, they could catch the next train.
She stayed at Edgar’s parents house for a few hours. While she was traveling, Edgar sent a card home telling Heyden to go on to Koen (Cologne), where he was to be transferred to the British.
A plumber by profession, he worked for the British and was give free time after his work was complete. She was able to visit him during those free hours.
The two married and moved to the United States in 1951 where Edgar had relatives. The arrived in New York where Edgar’s relatives lived, then they traveled cross country on Route 66 to California.
They lived in Torrence for 27 years.
When Edgar had to retire, “we always wanted to get out of the city and go up north where it’s nice and green,” Heyden said. They were driving through Oregon and came to Sweet Home.
“I said, I like it here,” Heyden said. They bought land in 1971 from Dennis Koch and moved up later.
“We love it,” Heyden said. “Sweet Home is great. People are nice. It’s just too sad that they closed all the mills so people lost their jobs. Living in a small place like this is the best there is. People are so helpful, so nice.”
They are now retiring for a second time, Heyden said. This time, they will go to the Hidden Lakes retirement home in south Salem.
“Right now I want to recuperate and then I want to check out Salem and look around there,” Heyden said. “There’s so many neat places.
“Sweet Home is the best, and all the people in it. I hate to leave them, but I’ll still be around. It’s not like I’m leaving tomorrow or something like that.”