Julius Peter Heil

He came as a boy from Düssmund on the Mosel around 1881–82 to a farm at the bottom of Prospect Hill in what is now New Berlin. He attended Mill Valley School, clerked at Winton’s general store on Prospect Hill, and helped gather the fieldstone that still forms the core of the childhood house later marked at 19890 West Julius Heil Drive.

Orphaned on Milwaukee streets by fourteen, he worked as a newsboy, streetcar conductor, and Falk shop hand. In 1899 he was in Buenos Aires installing welded streetcar rail. In 1901 he opened the Heil Rail Joint Welding Company, which grew into a major dump-truck and tank manufacturer that still trades under the Heil name. In 1938 the Republican who had already run Roosevelt’s state NRA board beat Progressive incumbent Philip La Follette. Time put him on its January 16, 1939 cover under the headline “Heil Heil.” In his first week he banned smoking at his first press conference, puzzled reporters who wanted a legislative message, and hand-signed thousands of certificates in green ink.

Two terms from 1939 to 1943 brought an employment peace act, a securities department, and a dairy-promotion tour long credited with popularizing “America’s Dairyland.” He lost a bid for a third term, returned as Heil Company chairman, and died in Milwaukee in 1949. Milwaukee got the factory; New Berlin kept the boyhood farm, the street name, and the industrial surname.