R.O. Heater was the area's first modern housing developer and served as a county commissioner years. This is how he is remembered:

Robert Heater: Daddy, Russell O. Heater, started Heater Well Company. We drilled water wells all over. In 1929, his first housing development was Page Park. I don't think they sold two lots in it before it went under. After World War II, Daddy bought land, put two streets in and called it Veteran's Hill, sold lots to veterans at cost. They went so fast. Daddy bought 35 acres for $1,000, sold the timber the next day for $600, put in waterlines and paved streets. They laughed at him in the drugstore that he would never sell lots. They'd say, "Russell, how are things going in your hills over there?" So he started calling it Russell Hills. He sold the first two lots at $800 apiece, the next two at $1,200, and after that he got $2,000 a lot. He developed Russell Hills I extension, then we optioned an area for Russell Hills III. He invested $200 an acre, and Jeff Sugg offered us $500 an acre. All we'd done was sketch roads on the map. Then we bought land on Dixon Avenue, cut streets in and a man bought them all. Then we developed West Russell Hills. That was our last development.

We started buying and moving houses. The house with the columns on Park Street across Harrison was on the other side of the street. We bought it, moved it and remodeled it. Two houses on Page Street were Montgomery Ward houses. We bought them out of a catalog and assembled them.

Our State magazine called Daddy, "Mr. Cary." He kept asking them to write about Cary, and they finally did. Daddy was county commissioner from 1946 to 1954. Back then, we didn't have a county manager, so the chairman of the board ran the county and Daddy was chairman. He wasn't well from the stress of the job and his business, so he gave it up.

Fred Seeger: My dad had been a gas and oil well driller in Pennsylvania. Dad heard about R.O. Heater who drilled water wells all over North and South Carolina. So we moved to Cary in 1944, and dad went to work for R.O. Heater.

C. Y. Jordan: Some men founded the famous Doghouse Club. They had their little section back in the corner of the drugstore, and the old-timers would get together and have a lot of fun. Russell Heater was one of them.

Ralph Ashworth: R.O. Heater was a fixture in the drugstore. We had the Doghouse Club then, where a bunch of men would come and have coffee and talk every morning. Then every night a lot of them would come back. So I had Mr. Heater every morning and every evening after dinner.