Leaving a legacy of creativity

Expert craftsman Heezen remembered for various donated works

“It is impossible to say how many people, animals, horse drawn carriages and historical buildings Heezen has carved over time because he has given most of them away.” — From an article in the December 2013 edition of Minnesota’s Maple Grove Magazine

BELLA VISTA — Gene Heezen and his wife MaryAnn were former residents of Bella Vista, living in the city from 1997 to 2002.

Gene Heezen passed away Jan. 20 at the age of 86 in Leander, Texas, where he had been living with his daughter Kathy and her family. MaryAnn Heezen had died almost two years earlier.

Many people in Bella Vista have seen samples of Gene Heezen’s work. He had a number of special talents, including painting, wood carving and writing, and he also made miniature models of buildings. One of them was a model of the Sunset Hotel in Bella Vista, which C.A. Linebarger Sr. and his brothers built in 1929.

After the hotel burned down in 1999, Heezen decided to build a “toscale” model of that hotel, which he donated to the Bella Vista Historical Museum. It was unveiled at the Historical Society’s 25th anniversary celebration in 2001.

It took Heezen four months to build the model, using photographs of the hotel and taking measurements of the hotel’s foundation at the actual site. All of it was built by hand. He said at the time that it was the sixth model he had built of various structures.

One of Heezen’s favorite creations was a replica of the Arkansas Traveler, which was given to the Bella Vista museum in 2010 and returned to Heezen last year for him to share with his grandsons since their grandmother was a native of Arkansas.

Heezen also built two replicas of the Elk Horn Tavern, one as it appeared before the Civil War Battle of Pea Ridge, and a second one as it looked before it was burned by bushwhackers and then rebuilt after the war. In 2000, he loaned these replicas to the Arvest Bank in the Highlands and from there they were to go to the Peel Mansion in Bentonville for display until the Visitor’s Center at Pea Ridge was remodeled, but he lost track of them over the years, and it is not known where they ended up.

The Heezens moved to Minnesota in 2002 to continue their retirement. Gene Heezen was featured in an article in December 2013 in Minnesota’s Maple Grove Magazine, which reported, “It is impossible to say how many people, animals, horse drawn carriages and historical buildings Heezen has carved over time because he has given most of them away.” He said the previous Christmas he sent out dozens of things to churches, museums, friends and family. He was a native of Green Bay, Wis., and displayed several of his works at the Plymouth Historical Society Museum in Plymouth, Wis.

In early 2014, he was contacted and asked by Bella Vista museum staff to build a large model of the Linebargers’ Dance Pavilion, a building that many years later became the Hill ‘n Dale restaurant on the shores of Lake Bella Vista. Gene was sent several photographs and set to work. When he finished, he delivered the model in person to museum president Carole Linebarger Harter on one of his trips to Leander.

The Heezens moved to Leander in 2015 and lived there the rest of their lives.

(Submitted Photos) This large wall display was painted by Gene Heezen in 2013 for the Plymouth Historical Society Museum from a small brochure depicting the Mission Farms that were started as a mission in the Minneapolis area in the late 1800s and expanded in 1927 to a working farm on the shore of Medicine Lake in Plymouth, Wis. The operation was expanded during the Great Depression, and the brochure depicted how it looked in the 1940s.

Carole Harter and Heezen stand with the Dance Pavilion model that Gene built and donated to the Bella Vista Historical Museum in 2014.

Heezen’s Arkansas Traveler model was on display at the Bella Vista Historical Museum for over 10 years.

The first thing one sees when entering the front doors of the Bella Vista Historical Museum is the “Linebarger Room.”

Heezen built and donated the model of the Sunset Hotel to the Bella Vista museum in 2001.