Education
He was sent to an air base in Hanover for flight training, but the war ended before he finished training.
He was sent to an air base in Hanover for flight training, but the war ended before he finished training.
Born and raised in Germany, he enlisted as a private in the German Luftstreitkräfte in March 1918, at 17 years of age, after finishing high school. He talked vividly about the situation by explaining that the German Revolution broke out on November 9, 1918, which caused Kaiser Wilhelm II to abdicate and flee the country, and since at that point in time each soldier made his own decision about his immediate future, Walter decided to go home to Essen. After the Armistice, the city of Essen was occupied by the French Army.
Walter"s older brother Kurt had also served in the German Army earlier in the war and was wounded in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme.
Kurt never fully recovered from his wounds that he suffered in the battle and died in 1920. After the war Walter returned to Essen and went to work as an apprentice in the grain distribution business, which later led to him starting his own grain business in 1926.
After arriving in the United States, he and Trude initially stayed with relatives in Chicago, while he learned the English language in night school and from listening to the radio. They lived in Chicago until 1941 with very little means.
Eventually, he became an United States citizen in 1945.
In 1941, they moved to Saint Louis, Missouri, where Walter opened a business selling Belgian light bulbs for a Western Extralite branch. He kept the business as it grew over time, even after his retirement in 1989, at which time he still remained chairman of the board, but then eventually sold the company in 1999 to the family of his original business partner in 1941. Walter was active in sports like tennis, soccer, snow skiing and swimming.
In fact, he was still a swimmer until the age of 103.
Heiman had once dined with Leah Rabin, the wife of Israel"s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. They had been at one of Israel"s Children"s Centers, which are built by a program that Mr.
Heiman supported. After his wife"s death in 1994, Walter moved to an elderly complex in University City, where he resided until his own death at the age of 106.