Name: Heidi Durig Heiby ’92
Position: Language Program Coordinator
Location: Command Language Program 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Stutggart, Germany
Major: German

When Heidi describes how she ended up teaching language skills to a Special Forces Army unit on a U.S. military base in Stutggart, Germany, she recounts a transcontinental odyssey.

After graduating from Wittenberg, Heidi lived near Wheeling, W.V., where she taught German at a private high school. Following the completion of her master’s degree at Indiana University in Bloomington, she moved to Indianapolis to teach English and German. At her school, 30 percent of the students were bussed in from the inner city. A majority of the other students came from project-type housing. It was here that Heidi learned the impact a child’s home environment has on his or her ability to learn and how teachers are often the pillars of the community. She discovered the difficulty teachers face daily, beginning with standard 70-hour work weeks. She also learned the meaning of “tough love.”

Between all of this, she married Captain Fritz Heiby, an active-duty Army officer, in 1996. Two years later, they were on their way to Germany, where Fritz would serve as chief of optometry at the base clinic in Stutggart. It was a completely different environment, but Heidi settled in by teaching evening German conversation classes, subbing at a local international school and teaching a German refresher course for the 1st Battalion. Eventually, a program manager position opened up at the base, and Heidi was hired, thus beginning another phase in her teaching journey.

As the manager, Heidi runs the unit’s Command Language Program. She coordinates foreign language refresher courses and materials for soldiers, so they can maintain the languages they were trained in as part of their Special Forces selection course. She also coordinates language training and materials to assist Special Forces soldiers on their missions. She tells her friends that she sometimes learns things before CNN does. Heidi also runs the language lab complex, which includes a computer lab, media center/classroom, and a lending library for at-home study.

Despite the occasional frustrations associated with being one of two female civilians in an all-male, all-military environment and having to learn “military lingo,” Heidi enjoys her unique teaching job, a job she never imagined she would have.

“ It is an amazing adventure, interesting, exciting, and fulfilling,” she says. “Most importantly, the example of patriotism, bravery, and selflessness that these extraordinary soldiers and their families have demonstrated has changed me forever, especially in light of recent world events.”