All cities · 20th century
1950s
233 dated events in 1950s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
20th century 233 dated mentions
1950s
- 1950The south side post · VFW Fort Miami Post 10006
The city's own record puts the post's beginning in 1950: the Plan Commission digest for a 2025 rezoning case describes the site as "historically home to the Fort Miami Post No 10006, that had been in existence since 1950."
Fort Wayne
- 1950The coal indictments: a mayor, a police chief, and fifty-two charges that never reached a verdict
The indictments: On 10 November 1950 a grand jury indicted Democratic Mayor Henry E. Branning, Police Chief Lester Eisenhut, Councilman Charles Boyer, Traffic Captain Gregor Klug, City Utilities purchasing agent Harold Battenberg and coal company president A. Eugene Martin…
Fort Wayne
- 1950The drive-ins, II: East 30, Hillcrest, Lincolndale, and the end of the outdoor era
Three more screens under the sky: The East 30 Drive-In, at 7500 SR-930 East on the old U.S. 30 toward New Haven, opened on October 6, 1950, with Randolph Scott in The Nevadan…
Fort Wayne
- 1950Miami Hills and Miami Village
The south side's postwar capture is documented to the ordinance number: the Miami Hills Addition — Lots 1 through 251, platted by the Crown Development Company on the west side of Miami Street north of the Erskine Park ground…
South Bend
- 1950Robert Lowell Miller Jr.: the federal judge from South Bend
Robert Lowell Miller Jr. (born 1950): born in South Bend on 21 November 1950 — the Federal Judicial Center's Biographical Directory of Federal Judges carries the birth in those words — and born and raised here, as the Congressional Record's tribute puts it.
South Bend
- 1950Frank Sullivan Jr.: the second justice
Frank Sullivan Jr. (born 1950): the Indiana Supreme Court's own biography opens with the tie in its own words: "Sullivan is a native of South Bend."
South Bend
- 1950LOGAN Community Resources
Founding: LOGAN was founded in 1950 by Joe and Sophie Newman, for their daughter Rita Jo — founded, that is, by two parents for one child, and widened into the county's principal charity for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
South Bend
- 1950Polio: the children's hospital the state built here
In 1950 the State of Indiana established the Northern Indiana Children's Hospital in South Bend, at 1234 North Notre Dame Avenue, for the children the disease had crippled…
South Bend
- 1950The state institution in the city: the children's hospital that became a developmental center
The state established the Northern Indiana Children's Hospital in South Bend in 1950, in the polio years, to care for children the disease had crippled; directories place it at 1234 North Notre Dame Avenue.
South Bend
- 19501950: Faut's Peak, Baker's Trade, the New Young Players
The 1950 Blue Sox finished fifth of eight at 55–55 — a .500 club, a record this history can now state flatly, since the season tables agree on it — but the season matters for three things that had nothing to do with the standings.
South Bend
- 195027 April 1950: TWA Flight 117 and the red disc
Trans World Airlines Flight 117, a DC-3 flying west from Washington to Chicago at about 200 miles an hour and 2,000 feet, was over northern Indiana on the night of 27 April 1950 when First Officer Robert F. Manning saw a bright light off to the right and well to the rear.
South Bend
- 1950Ralph S. Gustin: the Distinguished Service Cross at Haman
First Lieutenant Gustin distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action against enemy aggressor forces near Haman, Korea, on 11 August 1950.
Mishawaka
- 1950The Rhodes Scholarship: John Brademas, born here
The Rhodes Trust's scholars record, as carried in the Trust's verified roll of scholars, places him in the class of 1950, and New York University's own archival finding aid for his papers states the span plainly: "From 1950 to 1953, he studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University," taking the Doctor of Philosophy…
Mishawaka
- 1950Brook Motor Sales: Mishawaka's own Studebaker dealer
The house: South Bend built Studebakers, but Mishawaka bought them from a Mishawaka dealer: Brook Motor Sales Inc, at 916 East McKinley Avenue, which the Studebaker Drivers Club's dealer register dates from 1950 to 1964.
Mishawaka
- 1950The Mid-Century Clothing Trade
Named gap: the c.1950 clothing-trade state of South Bend, Mishawaka, and Osceola is uncoverable from open sources here.
Osceola
- 1950Case: TWA Flight 117 and the red disc, April 27, 1950 — seated at Goshen, over the county line
On the evening of April 27, 1950, TWA's Flight 117, a DC-3 westbound for Chicago with Captain Robert Adickes in the left seat and Captain Robert F. Manning as first officer, was over Goshen, Indiana — Elkhart County, the next county east…
Walkerton
- 1950–1952Charlene Pryer: The Fastest Blue Sox
She came to South Bend in 1950 after four-plus seasons at Muskegon and part of 1950 itself at Kalamazoo. Her 1951 season led the league in four departments: a .312 average, 133 hits, 106 runs and 129 stolen bases, with an All-Star selection at second base; in the last three games of the 1951 final she hit .357.
South Bend
- 1950–1953The Korean War · forty-three names in the Defense Department's file
Counted in full for this section, it carries forty-three fatal casualties with St. Joseph County as home of record — soldiers, Marines and airmen, from the war's first autumn (a county private died 10 September 1950…
South Bend
- 1950–1953Korea: two proven, one identified, and the county's forty-three
Counted from that list, St. Joseph County's dead are forty-three — the same forty-three South Bend's pass enumerated — from Private Clinton L. Anderson, killed September 10, 1950, to the last names of 1953.
Mishawaka
- 1950–1953Korea: two Marines — one home in 1953, one still on Hill 1282
During the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, his unit fought for Hill 1282 near Yudam-ni, on the western side of the reservoir, in the last days of November 1950; he was reported missing in action on 28 November 1950, on Hill 1282 .
Walkerton
- 1950–1954Sue Kidd: The Arkansas Teenager
She worked her way through the league's lower stops — Muskegon, Peoria, Kalamazoo in one account of the chain — and reached South Bend on August 1, 1950.
South Bend
- 1950–1962Polio: the seat in South Bend, and the clinic record that was not found
Where polio care sat for this county, at boundary size: the state established the Northern Indiana Children's Hospital in 1950 at 1234 North Notre Dame Avenue, South Bend, for children crippled by polio — the seat of this county's polio care, across the city line, as the hospital map of this valley so often was.
Mishawaka
- 1950–1968Frank M. Freimann — the chief who came with Magnavox
He came with the headquarters to Fort Wayne as executive vice president and served as president and chief executive from 1950 until his death in 1968 — one reference's body text says "died in 1967 in Manhattan," against its own header dates and the obituary record, and 1968 stands here.
Fort Wayne
- 1950–2001The tornadoes that struck the city
The Weather Service's Northern Indiana office keeps the city's tornado list, and its ceiling is low: no tornado stronger than F2 has ever been recorded inside Fort Wayne.
Fort Wayne
- 1950–2003The plate record: county 71 on a North Liberty windshield
The prefix systems' ceilings print as ceilings, not registrations: 69,993 combinations under the 1950 scheme, 239,976 under the 1963 scheme.
North Liberty
- 1950–2015The Roller Dome: a thousand kids a day
The building: The Roller Dome was built in 1950 by Jim and Marjorie Wall, by hand in the plain sense: Jim Wall, a World War II veteran and a skilled carpenter, built the rink from the ground up with his father Joe, on what had been an apple orchard at 444 West Coliseum Boulevard, then California Road, at the edge of a…
Fort Wayne
- 1950–2024Tornadoes · the county roster
The Storm Prediction Center's record, as the county trackers compile it, counts 32 tornadoes in Allen County from 1950 to 2024 .
Fort Wayne
- 1950–2026The end of farming here, measured: what the parcel file counts in November 2026
Set the measurement against the county frame of the first entry and the arc closes: the county went from 2,408 farms in 1950 to 547 in 2022 while holding about half its land in farms…
Granger
- 1950–2026The disability charities: LOGAN, the county's community-resources agency
LOGAN Community Resources of South Bend was started in 1950 by Joe and Sophie Newman, whose only child, Rita Jo, had special needs no school would serve — Rita Jo herself was never able to attend school.
New Carlisle
- 1950–todayBetter Homes of South Bend · twenty-two couples buy a street in secret
The answer to the redlined map, built by the men the map was drawn against: On 21 May 1950 a group of Black Studebaker workers and their wives incorporated Better Homes of South Bend — and kept it secret on purpose.
South Bend
- 1950–todayBoundary congregations — Hudson Lake Mennonite and the Rolling Prairie parishes
The Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (article of June 2024) records that the congregation grew from outreach by Olive Mennonite Church of Elkhart County — a namesake warning: that "Olive" is the Elkhart County congregation formerly called Shaum, not Olive Chapel of Olive Township…
New Carlisle
- 1951Edward A. and Joan White — Bowmar's founding household
In 1951 Edward A. White — a graduate engineer, twenty-four years old in 1952, formerly head of Farnsworth Television's electromechanical section and before that a Harvard research assistant, then employed by the Farnsworth-Capehart company in Fort Wayne…
Fort Wayne
- 1951South Anthony Speedway: the little track
In 1951 Mason and Robert McCulloch and Ray Walter built a speedway on the Harber family farm along South Anthony Boulevard — Carl Harber Jr., whose father owned the farm, is the record's witness — a 3/8-mile oval, dirt for its first season and then paved and slightly enlarged, lighted, and racing two nights a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays.
Fort Wayne
- 1951The Clyde: one room, two music lives
Movie palace to concert hall: The Quimby family's second great Fort Wayne room opened on April 19, 1951, at 1808 Bluffton Road in Quimby Village: the Clyde Theatre, designed by A. M. Strauss — the Emboyd's architect — commissioned by the family of Clyde Quimby, the operator who had opened the Emboyd in 1928.
Fort Wayne
- 1951The Clyde Theatre: the Quimby memorial and the region's premier movie house
The movie decades: The Clyde opened on April 19, 1951, and took its place at once as the region's premier movie house, drawing patrons from across northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio to Quimby Village for first-run pictures.
Fort Wayne
- 1951The Urban League: the federal ruling of 1951, the Hering House line, and the fade
The federal register dates the corporation's exemption ruling to March 1951, at 1555 West Western Avenue.
South Bend
- 1951The Airman the War Never Gave Back: Hugh Maynard Burch
Staff Sergeant Hugh Maynard Burch , of New Carlisle — a town of this county, named here on the county frame exactly as the casualty file carries him — died on 12 April 1951 with his remains not recovered.
South Bend
- 19511951 — the pennant and the title
The regular season: Under Karl Winsch, the 1951 Blue Sox went 76–36 and won the regular-season pennant outright, clinching first place on September 1 with a 5–1 win over Rockford.
South Bend
- 19511951: The Pennant and the First Championship
Karl Winsch — Jean Faut's husband, married to her since 1947 — took over the club in 1951, and the Blue Sox won the only true pennant in their history: 76 wins, the most the franchise ever recorded, against 36 losses, built in halves of 38–22 and 38–14, the second-half title theirs outright.
South Bend
- 1951The factories on film, II — Oliver's picture, and the Bendix negative
The company's own magazine, the Oliver Mirror , reported the premiere in its April 1951 number: Neighbors of the Land , a colour-sound film produced by the Oliver Corporation in collaboration with the Soil Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, was shown on 12 March 1951 in the community…
South Bend
- 1951Rocco's: twelve seats, 1951, and a seventy-fifth year
In 1951 they opened Rocco's at 537 North St. Louis Boulevard, with her parents, at twelve seats. A second, upscale house, The New Rocco's, ran from 1957 to 1965 alongside it.
South Bend
- 1951The ground after brewing: no successor, the 100 Center, and the brand that would not come home
The 100 Center's month-by-month state belongs to the Current & Today section; this section closes the ground's story where the making ends: no brewery operates at 100 Center in November 2026, and none has since 1951.
Mishawaka
- 1951The Moran School of 1951, the Osceola School's companion
The building, located on a 33 acre site, and of brick construction, was erected in 1951. It includes 11 classrooms, as well as a kitchen-lunchroom and a combination gymnasium-auditorium.
Osceola
- 1951–1953Korea's other Mishawaka dead: no decoration record reached
The city's other proven Korean War dead, whose deaths stand in the Wars section — Second Lieutenant Edwin F. Tabaczynski of the Air Force, lost 20 August 1951 with his remains not recovered, the city's unaccounted-for of that war; Private First Class Joseph H. Veevaete of the Marine Corps, killed 1 May 1953…
Mishawaka
- 1951–1957From the air: the 1951 and 1957 series, and the makers no record names
The St. Joseph County Public Library's Local & Family History department keeps the county's early aerial photography as a map collection — its telling as maps is in the Maps file…
South Bend
- 1951–1971Red Ball Jets: the shoe a generation grew up in
The launch: In 1951, after more than fifty years of Ball-Band footwear, the company brought out its first "sport shoe" — the revived brand's own history gives the year and the framing, and The Henry Ford's collection dating concurs: the sneakers called Red Ball Jets.
Mishawaka
- 1951–2008The six coaches
The six, at their induction years: Knute Rockne, of the charter class of 1951; Frank Leahy (1970), whose induction names Boston College and Notre Dame, the two schools he coached; Jesse Harper (1971), the coach who hired Rockne and built the program Rockne inherited…
Notre Dame
- 1951–2020The school fight · concentration, boycott, settlement
The board defended the lines: in 1951 it refused to let two Black basketball players transfer from Central to North Side.
Fort Wayne
- 1951–2025Notre Dame's fifty: the College Hall players, enumerated
George Gipp and Elmer Layden entered with the first class in 1951.
Notre Dame
- 1951–2026Hugh Maynard Burch — still on the Defense Department's unaccounted-for lists
Staff Sergeant Hugh Maynard Burch, of New Carlisle in this county, 93rd Bombardment Squadron of the 19th Bombardment Wing, went missing in action over the Yellow Sea on April 12, 1951 — one of the Defense Department's 43 St. Joseph County Korean War fatal casualties who also stands on its unaccounted-for list.
South Bend
- 1951–2026Restaurants as successions, with anniversaries counted: Rocco's at seventy-five, Frankie's the smokehouse — South Bend houses, and Osceola's own pair restated
In 1951 Rocco and Julia, with her parents, opened Rocco's — "the restaurant was small — just enough seating for 12" — at 537 North St. Louis Boulevard.
Osceola
- 1951–2026The sectional: the tournament the town measures by
LaFeber's 35 points came in a sectional game in 1951. The Lions' gym hosted the town's basketball winters in the same years.
Walkerton
- 1951–todayBowmar Instrument Corporation (later Bowmar LLC)
Founded: 1951, Fort Wayne. Purdue MEP's company history, the ACGSI places account, Hawfield and the Seventh Circuit's findings in Dixon v.
Fort Wayne
- 1951–todayMagnavox's defense company — and its Raytheon heir
The division's own historians closed its forty-year account (1951–1991) with annual sales above $650 million and more than 7,000 Fort Wayne employees across its legacy — the figures are the company's history's, printed as such.
Fort Wayne
- 1951–todayVietnam, Korea, and the parks of remembrance
A park named for veterans, 1951: The city's park record carries the first of its postwar statements in a single line of the Parks Department's chronology: "1951 — Veterans Memorial Park established."
South Bend
- 1952The Coliseum
The Allen County War Memorial Coliseum was dedicated on 28 September 1952 before 10,000 people and delegations from twenty-four veterans' organizations — the county's memorial to its war dead, built as an arena.
Fort Wayne
- 1952The big room: landmark concerts at the Memorial Coliseum
The arena years: The Allen County War Memorial Coliseum — dedicated September 28, 1952, as the county's memorial to its war dead, a history carried in the War Heroes and Famous Locations records — was for half a century the biggest indoor stage between Chicago and the Ohio line, and the touring music business used it that way.
Fort Wayne
- 1952Kevin Wall: Live 8, Live Earth, and the first internet Emmy
The Embassy's kid: Kevin Wall was born in Fort Wayne in March 1952 — most published biographies give the day as the 15th; an Indiana Music Makers profile gives the 5th, and the difference stands in the record unresolved.
Fort Wayne
- 1952Kelley: the pilot who became a Dodge dealer in ninety days
The date the group has always kept is 21 August 1952 — kept the more easily because it was also the day Jim's son Tom was born.
Fort Wayne
- 19521952 — the protest title
The regular season: South Bend finished second in 1952 at 64–45. There was no pennant; the championship, again, would have to come through the playoffs.
South Bend
- 1952The Walkout: August 30, 1952
The 1952 Blue Sox finished second at 64–45 behind Fort Wayne's pennant winners, with Faut having the finest season of her career — 20–2, a 0.93 earned run average, a .909 winning percentage that stands as the league's single-season record, 114 strikeouts, the pitching triple crown shared only in its wins column, where…
South Bend
- 1952The Protest Series: The 1952 Final Against Rockford
For the second straight year South Bend had beaten Rockford for the championship after trailing two games to none — in 1952 counting the erased game, it had trailed in a sense three times.
South Bend
- 1952July 20, 1952: South Bend's one NASCAR race
Two hundred laps on the park's dirt: On Sunday, 20 July 1952, NASCAR's Grand National division — the top stock-car series in the country — raced at Playland Park: 200 laps, 100 miles, on the park's half-mile dirt oval, before about 3,700 spectators, for a purse of $3,425.
South Bend
- 19528 May 1952: the Mishawaka index case
The record: The Air Force's index for 1952 carries one further St. In Blue Book's usage that evaluation is a statement about the file, not the sky: the report, as it reached the investigators, did not contain enough information to evaluate.
South Bend
- 195223 July 1952: Captain Kloth's two objects — the county's official Unknown
Case number 1578, in the published list of Blue Book cases officially listed as "Unknown," reads in its summary form: 23 July 1952, South Bend, Indiana, 11:35 p.m.; the witness an Air Force pilot, Captain H. W. Kloth; two bright blue-white objects flew together, and then the rear one veered off, after about nine minutes.
South Bend
- 19522 August 1952: the Tribune's sky watch
On 30 July 1952, with the Washington sightings still filling the wires, the Associated Press carried a South Bend dispatch across the country: "The Air Force and a newspaper appealed to thousands of persons in two states today to spend two hours watching for 'flying saucers.' The South Bend Tribune enlisted…
South Bend
- 19528 May 1952: Mishawaka's one line in the Air Force record
The record: The Air Force's index for 1952 carries one Mishawaka case, and an index line is all of it that the record preserves: "8 May 1952 — Mishawaka, Indiana — INSUFFICIENT DATA."
Mishawaka
- 19522 August 1952: a sky watch over Mishawaka's county
In the last week of July 1952, with the Washington, D.C. sightings filling the wires and the heaviest reporting month of the Blue Book era at its peak, the Associated Press carried a South Bend dispatch across the country: "The Air Force and a newspaper appealed to thousands of persons in two states today to spend two…
Mishawaka
- 1952Granger Missionary Church: the Bethel students' plant of 1952
The ground's oldest Protestant congregation of the modern roll began, by its own account, just over the state line: "On Easter Sunday 1952, two Bethel College students began holding services in an old brick house near Edwardsburg, MI."
Granger
- 1952Case: 8 May 1952 — the neighbouring-city index case
The whole of this case is one line in the Air Force's own 1952 index, and it is printed whole: Mishawaka, Indiana — INSUFFICIENT DATA.
Granger
- 1952Case: 31 July – 2 August 1952 — the newspaper sky-watch
Ten days after the Kloth sighting and in the immediate wake of the Washington flap, the South Bend Tribune did what the era's newspapers did at the flap's height: on 31 July 1952 it appealed to the public for help in a two-hour saucer watch, and the watch the register's floor dates to 2 August 1952 put the county's…
Granger
- 1952Case: the neighbouring-city index case — Mishawaka, 1952, in two datings
The whole of this case is one line in the Air Force's own 1952 index, and the line carries two dates in the record, printed whole and not merged: the index line itself reads, in full: Mishawaka, Indiana — INSUFFICIENT DATA.
Osceola
- 1952Case: 31 July – 2 August 1952 — the newspaper sky-watch
A press event, entered as one and not counted as a case: ten days after the Kloth sighting and in the immediate wake of the Washington flap, the South Bend Tribune did what the era's newspapers did at the flap's height: on 31 July 1952 it appealed to the public for help in a two-hour saucer watch, and the watch the…
Osceola
- 1952The one national-series race: Playland Park, 20 July 1952 — a single race, printed as a single race
There was exactly one NASCAR Grand National race on this valley's ground, and it is dated to the day: Sunday, 20 July 1952, at Playland Park, South Bend — race 22 of the 1952 Grand National season.
Osceola
- 1952Case: the neighboring-city index case, Mishawaka, 1952 — one case, two dates, printed unmerged
In the Project Blue Book Master Index for 1952 — the Air Force's year-by-year list of every sighting it logged, with the evaluation attached — the section headed "2–10 May 1952 Sightings" contains, under day 8, the entry: Mishawaka, Indiana — INSUFFICIENT DATA.
Walkerton
- 1952Case: Captain Kloth's two objects, July 23, 1952 — the county's one official Unknown
On the night of Wednesday, July 23, 1952 — in the middle of the great 1952 wave, four days after the first Washington National Airport radar weekend and six days before General Samford's Pentagon press conference — Captain H. W. Kloth, a United States Air Force pilot, watched two bright blue-white objects over South Bend.
Walkerton
- 1952Case: the newspaper sky-watch, high summer 1952 — a watch the Tribune organized, and no case at the end of it
The last 1952 case in this section is a case a newspaper made on purpose. In the last days of July 1952, with the Washington radar flap on every front page in America, the South Bend Tribune put its own city on watch.
Walkerton
- 1952The one national-series race, dated to the day: Playland Park, 20 July 1952
Race 22 of the 1952 NASCAR Grand National season was run at Playland Park, South Bend, on 20 July 1952. Tim Flock won it, in a 1951 Hudson, over Lee Petty, second, and Bub King, third; Herb Thomas won the pole; the race ran 200 laps, and the finishing record carries nineteen cars.
Lakeville
- 1952The farm communities of Liberty Township: Brethren, German, Quaker threads
The Church of the Brethren thread is the best documented: Lawrence Shultz's History of the Church of the Brethren in Indiana (1952) traces a congregation whose territory once covered much of the county's southwest, worshipping in two houses — the North Liberty house, purchased from another denomination in 1903, and Oak Grove…
North Liberty
- 1952The Morris Inn, at the Boundary
Its dedication is carried in two forms: April 1952 in the encyclopedia's account, May 1952 in Notre Dame's own Facilities record — both printed, neither settled here.
Notre Dame
- 1952–1965The Menagerie Before the Zoo: The Sanctuary Years, 1952–1965
The limit of the record: No earlier municipal zoo or menagerie in Fort Wayne stands in the record reached for this history — the park histories, the parks department's chronologies, and the zoo's own published history all begin the city's animal-keeping with the 1952 sanctuary.
Fort Wayne
- 1952–1969The Blue Book ledger for this ground
At county frame the file is not empty: the South Bend record dug in this build's South Bend leg carries a Blue Book ledger for St. Joseph County, including the county's official Unknown of 23 July 1952 and the dated first-wave and factory cases over the city and its works.
North Liberty
- 1952–1987The Hesburgh Transformation
Theodore M. Hesburgh became the university's fifteenth president in 1952, aged thirty-five, and held the office until 1987.
Notre Dame
- 1952–2005The station builders: Notre Dame's channel, the newspaper's channels, and Elkhart's channel — producing infrastructure carried as producing
The newspaper's channels: WSBT-TV signed on in December 1952 (21 December, on the contemporary trade record) as the television arm of the South Bend Tribune's house — Schurz Communications, the Tribune's company, owned WSBT from its beginning until the 2015 Gray/Schurz transaction set its sale in motion…
Osceola
- 1952–2013The boundary inn: the Morris Inn
Ernest M. Morris's gift of $1 million built it; it was dedicated in 1952 with 92 rooms, and it traded as the university's own inn for sixty years before closing in October 2012 for the rebuild: reopened in late August–September 2013 after a renovation of more than $30 million, at 132 rooms and 18 suites, AAA Four…
Osceola
- 1952–2016Television: WSBT-TV and the market it made
The first telecast: WSBT-TV first signed on in December 1952 — on the 21st by the Tribune 's own fiftieth-anniversary account; a station reference record gives the 22nd, and the dates stand as the records give them.
South Bend
- 1952–2018The Founders as Persons — Public-Record Strength Only
IBJ styles him "a farmer and small-town stock car racer in the 1950s"; the long-form company history captions a photograph "Bob and Joyce Newton after winning the South Bend track championship in 1952."
Lakeville
- 1952–2026The women of the posts
At the Indiana VFW's 31st annual encampment in Indianapolis in June 1952, Mrs. Addie Wilkerson of Fort Wayne was elected president of the Ladies Auxiliary's state department.
Fort Wayne
- 1952–todayThe Komets whole, 1952–today
The Komets were born of the new Allen County War Memorial Coliseum , dedicated in 1952, and of Ernie Berg , the club's founder and first general manager.
Fort Wayne
- 1952–todayThe Komets, 1952–today
Ernie Berg founded the club in 1952 — the K, the story goes, honoured his wife Kathryn, and he modeled the team on the Toledo Mercurys — and the Fort Wayne Komets played their first game on 25 October 1952, a 4–0 loss to Toledo, at the brand-new Allen County War Memorial Coliseum.
Fort Wayne
- 1952–todayK&K Insurance Group, Inc.
Founded: 1952, Fort Wayne. The company's own history (in both its current Aon-hosted About page and its older Company History page) dates its origin to 1952, when its founders "began managing and marketing a benevolent fund to provide accident medical benefits to injured race car drivers."
Fort Wayne
- 1952–todayDale Enochs: the native who carves limestone
The start: Dale Enochs, born in 1952, is a native of Fort Wayne, and his art began, as Davisson's teaching line would predict, at home and at the city's school: he remembers wanting to be an artist at five, painting at his grandmother's house, where she made small Victorian paintings of her own.
Fort Wayne
- 1953The Coliseum indoors: where USAC began
Midgets on the hockey rink: In January 1953, months after the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum opened, indoor auto racing began on a converted hockey rink inside the arena — a cement oval given in the drivers' records as a tenth of a mile.
Fort Wayne
- 1953The home drivers: Bullet Bobby and the Coes
Bob Coe took to the South Anthony Speedway in 1953 in a 1937 Ford and became, in his family's record, one of the best drivers of his time at the local tracks, known as "Bullet Bobby" Coe.
Fort Wayne
- 1953Parkview Memorial and the Randallia campus, 1953
Ground was broken on 12 August 1951, and on 8 November 1953 the $3 million Parkview Memorial Hospital was dedicated; the patients moved in from Lewis Street on 21 November 1953.
Fort Wayne
- 1953Saint Joseph High School — the Consolidated School
The founding: Saint Joseph High School began classes on September 20, 1953, the product of the merger of South Bend Central Catholic, Saint Joseph’s Academy and South Bend Catholic — which had itself absorbed Saint Hedwig’s high school — as the banked Schools record carries the merger.
South Bend
- 1953John Laskowski: The Super Sub
John Laskowski was born June 7, 1953, in South Bend, and played at St. Joseph's High School — class of 1971, a year ahead of Abernethy, the two overlapping in the same program — before joining Bob Knight's first recruiting class at Indiana.
South Bend
- 19531953: The Farewell Season
The six who walked out did not come back, and the 1953 Blue Sox could not replace them: 44–62, fifth of six, out of the playoffs.
South Bend
- 1953The bookmobile
The library on wheels: In 1953, the library's history records, "the Library's first Bookmobile served residents who were not served by a branch."
South Bend
- 1953The bookmobile the carmaker built
The vehicle: In 1953 the public library put its first bookmobile on the road — "the Library's first Bookmobile served residents who were not served by a branch," in the library's own history…
South Bend
- 1953–1954The end of the league, 1953–1954
Faut's career closed in 1953 with her second perfect game. In 1954 the Blue Sox finished second, five games behind Fort Wayne's pennant winners, and reached the playoffs one last time — the seventh playoff appearance in the club's record.
South Bend
- 1953–1954The "Fainting Irish" and the end of Leahy, 1953–1954
The game: November 21, 1953, at Notre Dame Stadium: No. 1 Notre Dame against No. 20 Iowa.
Notre Dame
- 1953–1957George Yardley: the Piston who carried Fort Wayne to two Finals
George Harry Yardley III (3 November 1928 - 12 August 2004) was a Stanford forward from Hollywood, California, whom the Fort Wayne Pistons drafted in 1950 and signed in 1953, after he kept his amateur standing for a run at the 1952 Olympics.
Fort Wayne
- 1953–1962The Packard merger and the Curtiss-Wright management
In the spring of 1953 Ford began the production drive and discounting war against General Motors that crushed the independents, who could not match Big Three prices: Studebaker's labor costs were the highest in the industry…
South Bend
- 1953–1970The descent: from Willys and Kaiser to the government-products business
Kaiser Industries bought the assets of Willys Motors — the Toledo maker of the wartime Jeep — on 23 March 1953, and the firm that resulted, carried first as Kaiser-Willys, became the Kaiser Jeep Corporation in 1963.
Mishawaka
- 1953–todayWKJG-TV → WISE-TV (channel 33)
Founded: 21 November 1953, Fort Wayne. The History Center's WANE-TV videotape collection description, the station histories and the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame biography of Hilliard Gates all agree: WKJG-TV began broadcasting 21 November 1953 , Fort Wayne's first television station , as an NBC affiliate on UHF channel 33.
Fort Wayne
- 1953–todayThe Superintendents
The record read for this section carries the office at full size from 1993 forward; of the earlier holders it documents two at their places in the school newspapers of their day — Dr. Alex Jardine, superintendent in 1953, and Monte Sriver, superintendent about 1991.
South Bend
- 1953–todaySaint Joseph High School
The consolidation: Saint Joseph High School began classes on 20 September 1953, the first consolidated, co-institutional Catholic high school in the South Bend area — one school, boys and girls in separate departments, gathered out of the parish high schools it replaced.
South Bend
- 1954Jack Molinas and the Pistons gambling case · 1954
When the pattern of telephone calls surfaced, owner Fred Zollner suspended his rookie in January 1954; the NBA banned Molinas for life, the first such ban in league history.
Fort Wayne
- 1954
- 1954Parker Place: the modern campus, the long decline, and the closure
By the 1950s the East State buildings were dilapidated and badly overcrowded, and in 1954 the state decided to move the institution to Parker Place Farm, one of the farms the school owned, at St. Joe and Stellhorn roads.
Fort Wayne
- 1954The Berry Street vanguard: Oettel, Fishman, and the golden era
Oettel: Russell Oettel landed at the Fort Wayne Art School in 1954, and stayed to run it.
Fort Wayne
- 1954Kenn Kaufman — the birding authority
The tie, exactly: Kaufman was born in South Bend in 1954 and began birding at the age of six — here. When he was nine the family moved to Wichita, Kansas, and the intensification of the obsession, the teenage travels, and the 1973 record all happened from Kansas and the road.
South Bend
- 1954The association and the advocates: organized families and citizens
The federal record dates the association's exemption to April 1954, the founding season of Indiana's state association as well; its local officers appear in the record across the decades…
South Bend
- 1954Tom Abernethy: The City Scoring Record and the Perfect Season
Thomas Craig Abernethy was born May 6, 1954, in South Bend, and at St. Joseph's High School he set the city's scoring record: 648 points in his senior season of 1971–72, 25.9 a game, for a third-ranked Indians team that won 22 games and the South Bend sectional championship.
South Bend
- 19541954 and the End of the League
Kalamazoo then beat Fort Wayne three games to two for the championship, the deciding game on September 5, 1954, standing as the last game the league ever played — and Dottie Schroeder, who had played the league's first game as a fifteen-year-old Blue Sox shortstop in 1943, won her championship ring in it, as Kalamazoo's shortstop.
South Bend
- 1954Kenn Kaufman — the field guide, from a South Bend childhood
Kenn Kaufman was born in South Bend in 1954 and began bird-watching here at the age of six; the family moved to Wichita, Kansas, when he was nine, and the record of Famous People carries the tie at that strength — a birth and a childhood start, with the life lived since from Arizona and Ohio.
South Bend
- 1954Broadmoor Shopping Plaza: the first plaza
The Redevelopment Commission's South Side history records the Broadmoor Shopping Plaza on the northeast corner of Miami and Ireland: a plan of 1954 for a center of 17 stores and 450 parking spaces, built by the Hilton Construction Company of Kenneth Woods, South Bend.
South Bend
- 1954Daniel L. Gard: the pastor who became an admiral
The tie, exactly: Daniel Lee Gard, born January 29, 1954 — his birthplace is not stated in the sources read, and he is not a born-or-raised Mishawaka figure.
Mishawaka
- 1954Across the line: the rescue mission, the homeless center, the food bank and its successor
The rescue mission: Hope Ministries began as Hope Rescue Mission in February 1954, founded by Tobe E. Schmucker under the direction of the Mennonite Board of Missions.
Mishawaka
- 1954The advocates: the county's citizens, at Mishawaka's size
The advocacy layer is the county's, and it is seated across the river: The citizens' layer of this record — the layer that inspected, advocated, and educated while the county and the state provided the beds…
Mishawaka
- 1954The VFW: Post 1954
Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1954 holds the township's second veterans' hall, south of town at 66992 Tamarack Road, and its paper trail is the permit record: the Indiana Alcohol & Tobacco Commission's local-board schedules carry 'Veterans of Foreign Wars 1954 Inc, DBA V.F.W. #1954, 66992 Tamerack Dr, North Liberty'…
North Liberty
- 1954–1955The first of the great names to go · Singer, 1954
Nine years before the greatest closing, the first one taught the city what a closing announcement sounded like: In April 1954 the Singer Manufacturing Company announced that it would close its South Bend cabinet works…
South Bend
- 1954–1956The Indiana Toll Road: the northern edge, 1956
The toll road was built past the city's north edge in two years, and a South Bend firm laid its first miles: The Indiana Toll Road Commission's own 1954 report records the start: construction of the $280,000,000 Northern Indiana East–West Toll Road began on 21 September 1954, and the first construction contract went…
South Bend
- 1954–1963The last chiefs — Nance, Hurley, Egbert, Burlingame
The merger's chief: When Studebaker combined with Packard on 1 October 1954, the Studebaker-Packard Corporation was formed under Packard's president, James J. Nance.
South Bend
- 1954–1963The lean years begin — Brennan, Kuharich, Devore, 1954–1963
Brennan: Terry Brennan, a Leahy player, was hired from the freshman coaching staff in his mid-twenties and coached 1954–58, going 32–18.
Notre Dame
- 1954–1966The last chiefs in complete succession to the end of the house: Studebaker, 1954–1966
After Vance: James Nance , president of the new Studebaker-Packard company from its birth on 1 October 1954, retiring when Curtis-Wright's three-year management contract began on 31 October 1956.
Osceola
- 1954–1981The suburban turn: rooftops first, and the first industrial seat
Granger's commercial era begins, as its parish history happens to document, with a land developer's arithmetic: in 1954 Kenneth Zook of Zook Realty of Elkhart donated the five-acre St. Pius X site on Fir Road while planning 270 homes within the parish bounds — the first hard number of the subdivision era in this record.
Granger
- 1954–2003The Bond-Built System: The Parks Since 1945
Lead: The modern system was built in a thirty-year run of bonds, purchases and small foundings that the department's chronology records year by year, and it begins with a plan: "1954 — First comprehensive park master plan developed."
South Bend
- 1954–2018The Park Master Plans, 1954–2027
Its first entry is the chronology's: "1954 — First comprehensive park master plan developed." The next three stand at the same depth, dated foundings of a planning habit: "1982 — Five Year master plan completed"; "1987 — Five year master plan completed"; "1998 — Five Year Parks & Recreation Master Plan completed."
South Bend
- 1954–2025Isiah Whitlock Jr.: the record completed
Isiah Whitlock Jr. (1954–2025): the People section carries this actor compactly, and as a living person. Whitlock was born in South Bend on 13 September 1954 and starred at football at John Adams High School, class of 1972.
South Bend
- 1954–2025The rescue, homeless and food set: a mission of 1954, a center of 1988, a food bank of 1993
The rescue mission came first: Hope Ministries of South Bend — incorporated as Rescue Incorporated, and long known as the Hope Rescue Mission, under that name already sheltering the homeless by 1959 — was established in 1954…
New Carlisle
- 1954–2026The rescue, homeless and food set: two South Bend houses, a six-county food bank — and the one Granger point where the set touches this ground
Hope Ministries (the rescue mission of the set): Hope Ministries, South Bend — the mission house at 532 South Michigan Street, with its men's emergency shelter and residential programs at 432 South Lafayette Boulevard…
Granger
- 1954–2026The Toll Road: across the top in 1956, an interchange a generation late
Construction of the $280-million road began on 21 September 1954; the Commission's own 1955 report illustrates the start of work "at Sycamore Road in St. Joseph County," one township west of this frame.
Granger
- 1955The vaccine close · 1955
On April 12, 1955, at Ann Arbor, Dr. Thomas Francis announced the verdict of the largest field trial in medical history: the vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk was "safe, effective and potent," and it was licensed the same day.
Fort Wayne
- 1955Arts United of Greater Fort Wayne
Founding: Arts United was established in 1955 as the Fort Wayne Fine Arts Foundation. Its first member organizations were the Fort Wayne Art School and Museum, the Fort Wayne Civic Theatre, and the Fort Wayne Musical Society — an exact map of the city's established arts in that year.
Fort Wayne
- 1955Southgate Plaza: the first plaza
The form arrived in full in 1955, when Southgate Plaza opened at Pettit Avenue and Calhoun Street on the south side: forty stores on forty acres, in the News-Sentinel's millennium-history summary, "with plenty of easy parking."
Fort Wayne
- 1955The umbrella: Arts United of Greater Fort Wayne
Founding: In 1955 a circle of civic leaders — Arts United's own retelling, through its president Susan Mendenhall, places the talks in the tea room of the Wolf and Dessauer department store — formed the Fort Wayne Fine Arts Foundation, today Arts United of Greater Fort Wayne.
Fort Wayne
- 1955David and Peter Turnley: McClellan Street
The most decorated photographers Fort Wayne ever produced started on one downtown street: David C. Turnley and Peter N. Turnley, twin brothers, were born in Fort Wayne on 22 June 1955, sons of Dr. William Loyd Turnley, an orthodontist, and Elizabeth Ann (Protsman) Turnley, and grew up on McClellan Street in downtown…
Fort Wayne
- 19557 February 1955: the crew of American Airlines Flight 266
At 7:55 p.m. on 7 February 1955, the flight crew of American Airlines Flight 266, over Fort Wayne, reported star-like objects hanging stationary due north of the aircraft at an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 feet, which then departed at a speed the crew described as terrific.
Fort Wayne
- 1955Portage Manor's second life: the county home as a residence for the mentally ill
In 1955 the law itself assigned the role: the Division of Mental Health could place psychiatric-hospital patients in the county home at the state's payment, with quarterly visits to judge each placement.
South Bend
- 1955Harold Brazier: 105 Wins Out of South Bend
Harold Leon Brazier was born October 22, 1955 — BoxRec gives Indianapolis as the birthplace and South Bend as the hometown; other registers print South Bend as the birthplace, and the conflict stands — and he fought out of South Bend for twenty-two years, one of the few modern fighters to win more than a hundred professional bouts.
South Bend
- 1955Jerry Scott: the comics page
The tie: Jerry Scott was born in South Bend on May 2, 1955, and was introduced to the newspaper business delivering the South Bend Tribune from his bicycle, in King Features' biography of him.
South Bend
- 1955Jerry Scott — the comics, written from a Tribune paper route
Jerry Scott was born in South Bend on 2 May 1955 — and his publisher's biography ties the birth to the trade in one stroke: he was introduced to the newspaper business delivering the South Bend Tribune from his bicycle, on the paper route that preceded the career.
South Bend
- 1955The county home's second life, at Mishawaka's size
The poor farm became a mental-health institution — for this city's residents too: The 1906 infirmary on Portage Prairie, whose relief record stands in Charities, spent its last seven decades as Portage Manor, and from 1955 the law itself assigned the role: the Division of Mental Health could place psychiatric-hospital…
Mishawaka
- 1955The 1955 page's unassigned fragments
Three fragments of the 1955 bench cannot be assigned to any house, and they print unassigned. A name, "Leo Frank," stands in the interleaved columns without a firm.
Roseland
- 19551950–1989 — the bench generation and the lumber succession
The 1955 bench gives the band its names, at advertisement strength. Karl Weis kept a garage on the corridor in 1955 — one of the two firms in the interleaved 401 North advertisement, the pharmacy being the other, with the address assignment unresolved (C40).
Roseland
- 1955–1960Remo Belli: the Weather King head, and what "first" the record allows
James V. Erwin, a 3M chemical engineer of St. Paul, Minnesota, was the first to use DuPont's Mylar polyester film as a drumhead, and his Letters Patent No. 2,830,484, for a drum head of thermoplastic polyester sheet, was filed 28 June 1955 and granted 15 April 1958 — before Belli's grant.
Mishawaka
- 1955–1973The open-housing fight · William Morris, the realtors' board, and the ordinance of March 1968
Thirteen years from an institute of one man to the law of the city: The organized campaign began in 1955 , when William R. Morris — Central High School class of 1939, an Army Air Corps veteran, and since 1948 the proprietor of the city's first Black real-estate agency — launched the Institute for Minority Housing .
South Bend
- 1955–1976The Countryman's Press: a statewide farm paper published from Mishawaka, 1955–1976
Ayer's directory for that year lists the Countryman's Press: bi-weekly, classed "Ind. Agric." — an Indiana agricultural paper — established 1955, five columns, subscription one dollar, circulation 4,389, edited by Robert A. Rhodes and published by the Cooperative Publishing Company at 116 West Mishawaka Avenue.
Mishawaka
- 1955–1988The union of the arts: the Fine Arts Foundation, 1955
The founding: In 1955 Fort Wayne's arts organisations did the thing this section exists to record. The Fort Wayne Art School and Museum, the Fort Wayne Civic Theatre and the Fort Wayne Musical Society founded the Fort Wayne Fine Arts Foundation, with Sam Rea of Rea Magnet Wire as its first board chairman.
Fort Wayne
- 1955–1990Comics authorship: the strip written from a local paper route
Jerry Scott was born in South Bend on 2 May 1955, and delivered the South Bend Tribune on his bicycle as a boy — the paper route is the local tie, and it is the tie the row names.
Osceola
- 1955–2009Prolific genre and popular lines at true strength
Ralph McInerny taught at the University of Notre Dame from 1955 to 2009 as Grace Professor of Medieval Studies, and wrote, by his own count given to Notre Dame News in 2007, "over 100" novels.
Osceola
- 1955–2012The Christian line: Harris Prairie Church of Christ
In December 1955 the South Bend Tribune carried the legal notice of the election of trustees of the Harris Prairie Church of Christ, the election to be held at the church in January 1956, with L. O. Longley named as trustee…
Granger
- 1955–2026Black Women's Organizing and the Sisters
The organizing that demonstrably serves this ground is seated in South Bend and county-wide in charter, its best-documented form the South Bend Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta: chartered December 3, 1955 at the LaSalle Hotel as Epsilon Mu Sigma by nine women out of a local Sorors Club…
Granger
- 1955–2026The posts and the parade: Post 308 stands; no stone does
A "Founding Year 1955" rests only on that nonprofit directory profile; it is printed as a directory claim, not as a charter date — the Indiana Legion's post history is the named settler.
Osceola
- 1955–todayThe Penn boundary: a second district inside the city's school geography
In 1955, Mishawaka High School — its enrollment climbing toward the 1,985 it would reach in 1958 — announced that it would stop accepting Penn Township students from 1959.
Mishawaka
- 1955–todayComics authorship, credited as literature
The comics test names Jerry Scott (born May 2, 1955, in South Bend), and the paper-route story at the checklist's heart verifies — with its geography graded in the open.
Granger
- 1955–todayThe institutional production houses in succession: Golden Dome, Fighting Irish Media, and WNIT's producers
The university line: production at Notre Dame ran first through WNDU itself (art-64-5) — the university as broadcaster, 1955–2005 — and, after the station's sale, through the university's own production houses: Golden Dome Productions, the university's production company of the post-WNDU generation, and its successor…
Osceola
- 1956The general-aviation layer: Chapter 2, the schools, and the fight to keep Smith Field
The field settled into the general-aviation life it still leads, and its institutions accumulated: EAA Chapter 2, chartered at Fort Wayne in 1956 — the second chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association in the world, by its number…
Fort Wayne
- 1956Eugene E. Parker — the Fort Wayne agent who ran football from here
Born and raised in Fort Wayne: Eugene E. Parker was born in Fort Wayne on 24 February 1956 and starred where he grew up.
Fort Wayne
- 1956St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School
The opening: The school's own strategic plan tells the first day plainly: on September 4, 1956, St. Vincent de Paul opened its first four classrooms for grades one through four, with one hundred sixty students, three Adrian Dominican nuns and one lay teacher.
Fort Wayne
- 1956Fort Wayne Ballet
Founding: In the mid-1950s, with the city thriving as an industrial hub, a group of residents decided a proper metropolis needed a ballet academy, organized and raised the money, and in 1956 filed articles of incorporation…
Fort Wayne
- 1956The returns II: eagle, turkey, and the downtown falcons
Restoration ran from 1956 to 2004: the DNR counts 2,795 wild-trapped turkeys released at 185 sites around the state.
Fort Wayne
- 1956Timothy J. Roemer: congressman and ambassador, born here
Timothy John Roemer (born 1956): in the Public Servants record Roemer stands in the House succession and nowhere at entry size; the sweep enters him at the size the official biography supports.
South Bend
- 1956Jean Charlot at Saint Mary's: the Saints of the Arts
In 1956 she commissioned the French artist Jean Charlot — then conveniently at work at the University of Notre Dame — to paint frescoes of the twelve Saints of the Arts, in separate frames on the exterior walls of O'Laughlin Auditorium, at the main entrance of what became the Moreau Center for the Arts.
South Bend
- 1956The west side's halls: the Dyngus circuit
The circuit's anchors, as the Events record names them: the West Side Democratic Club, manning its post on the festival's circuit since 1956; the Crumstown Conservation Club; and the M.R. Falcons, whose Nest #4 on Keller Street took the 2026 celebration when renovations displaced it.
South Bend
- 1956The 1956 canvass: twenty-three names
The trade grown wide and specialized: The directory sample's 1956 canvass prints twenty-three names under Mishawaka's photography headings — twenty-one under "Photographers—Commercial": Ames R. Templeton, Barzilla M. Hutchinson, Camiel C. Mahank, Carl R. Bassler, Carmelo V. Barone, Chas E. Walters, Chas F. Martin Jr.…
Mishawaka
- 1956St. Pius X: the founding, 1936–1956
The parish was formally established in 1956, the year of the first Mass in the Fir Road church, beginning with 145 families.
Granger
- 1956–1969Buddy Emmons: born here, and the pedal steel rebuilt in Tennessee
In late 1956, playing with Little Jimmy Dickens and then Ernest Tubb, Emmons split the function of the two pedals that carried certain strings from a tonic chord to a subdominant into independently workable pedals — the "split pedal," soon the standard arrangement of the E9 tuning, first used on a Tubb session on his own recollection.
Mishawaka
- 1956–1978The dance floor: the Ballet and the Collective
The Ballet: Fort Wayne Ballet presents itself, in its own published profiles, as Indiana's oldest professional ballet company, founded in 1956.
Fort Wayne
- 1956–1982Central State Bank of Lakeville — the Holding Company's Bank, 1956–1982
The second bank was a different creature: Central State Bank of Lakeville, Indiana — FDIC Certificate 17571 — established 2 April 1956 at 222 S. Michigan St , charter class NM, and an affiliate of St. Joseph Bank & Trust's holding company, St. Joseph Agency, Inc. , from birth.
Lakeville
- 1956–1990The Archive and the Schoolyard: Where the County's Telling Was Filed
The collection: the children's rhymes, the playground games, the jokes, the beliefs and the local legends of Indiana schoolyards were, for a generation, collected as scholarship down in Bloomington: the Indiana University Folklore Archives, established in 1956 by Richard M. Dorson of the IU Folklore Institute, built…
South Bend
- 1956–1998The bypass that became a highway, and the toll-road edge dated: the parkway whole, the Toll Road at this ground's edge
The toll/interstate edge, dated against this ground: the Indiana Toll Road — the Indiana East–West Toll Road, 156.28 miles from the Illinois line to the Ohio line, signed I-80/I-90…
Osceola
- 1956–todayThe Toll Road's Edge: Exit 77, the Town's Exit
The Toll Road opened in 1956 with sequential exit numbering and converted to the mileage scheme in 1981; the official exit list places the Roseland interchange at Toll Road mile 76.46 and gives its course as old Exit 8, new Exit 77, "SR 933 – South Bend — Serves University of Notre Dame."
Roseland
- 1957Northcrest Shopping Center: the north side answers
A center built with a neighborhood: Northcrest was not planted in front of houses that already stood; it was erected, in 1957, alongside the houses themselves.
Fort Wayne
- 19577 August 1957: the meteorologist's four-hour light
The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette of Saturday morning, 10 August 1957, ran the story under the headline "Pinpointing the Mystery," with a photograph of Don Semancik, meteorologist at the Fort Wayne Weather Bureau, pointing out where the "star" he saw Wednesday morning had appeared in relation to the horizon.
Fort Wayne
- 1957The regulated era: four carriers on the April 1957 timetable
The fullest early snapshot of airline South Bend is a timetable: The Official Airline Guide for April 1957 shows four carriers working the field — North Central Airlines with ten weekday departures, United with nine, Lake Central with six, and Trans World Airlines with three.
South Bend
- 1957Drag racing: the strip South Bend never had
In April 1957 the Riley High School newspaper, the Hi-Times , editorialized for one: "If the community of South Bend had a drag-strip it would give these would-be-engineers a perfect place to test their automotive ideas."
South Bend
- 1957January 1957: the year's first index page
The record: The Air Force's index for 1957 opens its January page with a South Bend case — the first data line under the month's heading in both digitized copies of the index.
South Bend
- 1957The South Bend Civic Theatre
The city's own company was founded in 1957 by two Notre Dame graduates, and it has played every year since — the longest continuous stage institution in this record.
South Bend
- 1957The fiftieth year: 58,325 volumes, Penn Township, and two branches
The count: The library marked fifty years from the City Hall founding with an open house and reception on September 25, 1957, and the nomination, citing the anniversary pamphlet, fixes the institution's size at mid-century: "the library was serving a population of approximately 40,000 (including Penn Township and two…
Mishawaka
- 1957Case: January 1957 — the next index year, opened
The register's floor opens the next index year after the flap years, and this section opened it: the Blue Book index and unknowns literature for 1957 were searched for a South Bend, Mishawaka or township entry in January 1957.
Granger
- 1957Case test: January 1957 — the next index year, opened
Tested negative at index strength: the register's floor opens the next index year after the flap years, and this section opened it: the Blue Book unknowns literature and the NICAP chronologies for 1957 were searched for a South Bend, Mishawaka, Osceola or Penn Township entry in January 1957.
Osceola
- 1957Case: the next index year opened — South Bend, January 1957
In the Air Force Master Index for 1957, the section headed "January 1957 Sightings" opens with the entry: South Bend, Indiana — Insufficient Data.
Walkerton
- 1957The Founding, 1957 — and Conflict C50, Printed Whole
What every carrier agrees on: in 1957 , Bob and Joyce Newton began making their own race tires by re-treading street tires with softer compounds , selling to local racers.
Lakeville
- 1957–1962Darl Parker and the Lincoln National robbery · the road to Alcatraz
The robbery: on Friday, October 18, 1957, Darl Lee Parker — the name is spelled Darl Dee Parker in the caption of his federal appeal, and Daryl Lee Parker in the Alcatraz literature — and John T. Bartholomew robbed the Clinton and Rudisill branch of the Lincoln National Bank and Trust Company of Fort Wayne of $50,104.
Fort Wayne
- 1957–1967A regulated-era timetable snapshot, and the first jets
The snapshot is the April 1957 Official Airline Guide, and it shows four carriers on one field: North Central, 10 weekday departures; United, 9; Lake Central, 6; TWA, 3 — twenty-eight weekday departures in the regulated era, divided among four airlines in the proportions the Guide prints.
Osceola
- 1957–1969Len Thornson: the Wayne Gretzky of the IHL, for twelve winters
Len Thornson (4 February 1933 - 12 December 2021) was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, arrived in Fort Wayne in 1957, and then did not leave the middle of the Komets' lineup for twelve consecutive seasons.
Fort Wayne
- 1957–1977Concordia Senior College
Founded: The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod authorized a senior college in 1951 to complete its pre-seminary course, and Concordia Senior College opened in 1957 on a 191-acre campus in north Fort Wayne designed by Eero Saarinen…
Fort Wayne
- 1957–1979The regulated era: four carriers in 1957, first jets in 1967
The April 1957 Official Airline Guide shows four carriers serving South Bend, with weekday departures of North Central 10, United 9, Lake Central 6, and Trans World Airlines 3 — twenty-eight weekday departures at a two-runway county field.
Granger
- 1957–1981The City's Other Zoo: Storyland at Rum Village
Rum Village Park, on the city's south side — acquired in 1916 for forty-five thousand dollars — opened Storyland Zoo in 1957, a children's zoo of farm animals and nursery-rhyme exhibits, with a children's train that began the same year and wound through the park.
South Bend
- 1957–2001The district: Penn Township in 1978, Harris Township in 2001
The expansions were not annexations of empty ground: Penn Township held the city's eastern suburbs and its own school corporation, and its people had been counted in the library's served population since at least the anniversary measure of 1957.
Mishawaka
- 1957–2005From the air: the federal series and the unnamed fliers
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Aerial Photography Field Office catalogues its St. Joseph County coverage by program and year — the county's series, at 100 percent coverage each: Farm Service Agency flights of 1957 (1:20,000, black and white), 1965 (1:20,000) and 1973 (1:40,000)…
Mishawaka
- 1957–2007The firehouse theatre: Civic Theatre, 1957
The company: The South Bend Civic Theatre was founded in 1957, and it bills itself as the oldest continuously operating community theatre company in the South Bend and Mishawaka area.
South Bend
- 1957–2009South Bend Civic Theatre: the children's stage
South Bend Civic Theatre was founded in 1957 and is the oldest continuously operating community theatre in the South Bend and Mishawaka area.
South Bend
- 1957–2024The scholarship stock: what the journals hold on this ground — ice, water, traders, and one road
Emma Lou Thornbrough's The Negro in Indiana (Indiana Historical Bureau, 1957) is the scholarly spine of the Underground Railroad branch — the monograph the branch's addendum names twice as settler, for the county's 1851 referendum count and its colonization answer.
Granger
- 1957–2025The football note's open pulls, settled
Oklahoma, 1957 — a second source: Brennan's 7–0 at Oklahoma rested at season-summary level on a single source.
Notre Dame
- 1957–todayWPTA (channel 21) — "21 Alive"
Founded: 28 September 1957, Fort Wayne (licensed to Roanoke).
Fort Wayne
- 1957–todayQueen of Peace School: opened 1958, closed 1970, reopened 1998
The founding: Queen of Peace parish was established by Bishop Pursley in 1957, on the city's growing south side, and its first chapter is a fact of the web's weave: the parish's first Masses were celebrated at Twin Branch School — a public school, lent to a Catholic parish for its first worship…
Mishawaka
- 1957–todayThe strip the town did have — at county size: Osceola Dragway, 1957, on Elkhart County ground
Osceola has a drag strip under its own name: Osceola Dragway, opened in 1957 by Art Chizum, who built the place from scratch and ran it until his death in 2000…
Osceola
- 1957–todayThe Anchor Firm Here — Hoosier Racing Tire
Hoosier Racing Tire Corp. — founded 1957 by Bob and Joyce Newton; headquartered at 65465 S.R. 931, Lakeville , its address of record in November 2026; all manufacturing at Plymouth since 1979; a 100% subsidiary of Continental AG since 4 October 2016; president and CEO Joerg Burfien since 1 January 2020.
Lakeville
- 1958The Foellinger Foundation: the grantmaking machine
The machine: Helene Foellinger and her mother Esther created the Foellinger Foundation in 1958, funded by Helene's lifetime gifts, both women's estates, and contributions from the News Publishing Company until The News-Sentinel was sold in 1980 (the fortune and the family are in the Wealth section).
Fort Wayne
- 1958The Foellinger bequest: a newspaper fortune becomes the city's foundation
The Foellinger Foundation was created in 1958 by Helene Foellinger and her mother Esther A. Foellinger, and it was built the way family foundations of that era were built: the founders gave during their lives — Helene gave substantially to the foundation across her lifetime…
Fort Wayne
- 1958The Scholarship Foundation of St. Joseph County: the county's own scholarship endowment
As Jeff Rea of the Regional Chamber wrote in the South Bend Tribune in January 2026: "Hats off to the community leaders who, in 1958, recognized how critical education is to the future success of our students and launched an effort to ensure that every St. Joseph County high school student with academic qualifications…
South Bend
- 1958The distinction · the "South Bend Shovel Slayer" is a story from a film
The story comes from the film Home Alone (1990), where it is a tale an older brother tells to frighten a younger one about their reclusive neighbor, "Old Man Marley" — a man said to have murdered his family and half the block in 1958 and to have escaped justice ever since.
South Bend
- 1958Dickie Thon: Born Here, and the Fastball
Richard William Thon was born June 20, 1958, in South Bend, because his father Fred — a Puerto Rican whose own playing career in the Dodgers' organization had ended with an arm injury — was finishing a business degree at Notre Dame.
South Bend
- 1958The price: Paul Howe, 1958
Recorded plainly, as the sanctioning body recorded it: USAC's own review of its 1958 National Midget season carries the death whole.
South Bend
- 1958Ironwood and Jackson: the fair buys its home
Forty acres, again: In 1958 the incorporated fair purchased forty acres at the corner of Ironwood and Jackson in South Bend, the address the grounds carry today as 5117 South Ironwood Drive.
South Bend
- 1958Lisa Germano: the violinist who walked out of the heartland band
The tie, exactly: Lisa Ruth Germano was born June 27, 1958, in Mishawaka, one of six children of Rocco and Betty Germano — both parents music teachers, per Encyclopedia.com…
Mishawaka
- 1958The price: Paul Howe, 1958 — the named fatality, verified at record strength, in his own article
The dead, named: Paul Howe, 43, of Danville, Indiana, was killed during the 50-lap USAC National Midget feature at the South Bend Motor Speedway on Wednesday, 18 June 1958, after striking the fence, then flipping back onto the track and landing upside down.
Granger
- 1958–1975The festival that taught the city to gather: Franke Park, 1958
The first Fine Arts Festival was held on 17 May 1958 at Franke Park, originated and chaired by Margaret Ann Keegan, the public servant whose name Arts United now gives to its arts education award.
Fort Wayne
- 1958–todayBishop Luers High School
Founded: Luers opened in 1958 at 333 East Paulding Road, the south-side and first-completed half of Bishop Leo Pursley's campaign to relieve Central Catholic, which held more than 1,400 students by 1956.
Fort Wayne
- 1958–todayThe Stanley Clark School
Founded: The city's independent school was founded in 1958 by Mary (Mollie) Bernard, supported by her husband Leon, as the Mary Reid Cleland School — named for Mary's grandmother, a schoolteacher in Scotland.
South Bend
- 1958–todayMary Frank Elementary School: the township era's surviving school
Mary Frank is the oldest standing school inside the CDP, and it began as Harris Township's own: erected in 1958 — the township era's last building on this ground, raised five years before the reorganization folded the township unit into Penn-Harris-Madison…
Granger
- 1959The bowling and equipment men — Carteaux, Schmidt and Brown
Two Fort Wayne manufacturers began in the trades they served: Bob Carteaux and Marty Schmidt started Classic Products in 1959 as Fort Wayne Bowling Supply, in the Key Lanes pro shop, and built it into the bowling industry's catalogue house.
Fort Wayne
- 1959Ed Viesturs — born here, raised in Rockford, first American up all fourteen
The tie, stated precisely: Ed Viesturs was born in Fort Wayne on 22 June 1959 and raised in Rockford, Illinois.
Fort Wayne
- 1959The long-lived bars: Henry's, the Brass Rail, the Green Frog
Henry's: The best-documented of the postwar rooms is Henry's at 536 West Main Street, family owned and operated since 1959 by the Freistroffer family — the brothers John and Hank Freistroffer, who also ran Columbia Street West on the Landing for more than three decades.
Fort Wayne
- 1959Henry's: the welder's restaurant on West Main
A landmark earned at the stove: Henry Freistroffer was a welder with seven children and an eighth coming when his wife's small inheritance gave him the stake to buy the tavern at 536 West Main Street in 1959; the family had grown up in Lakeside and bought close to home.
Fort Wayne
- 1959The Fort Wayne Artists Guild and the crafts guilds
The guild: The Fort Wayne Artists Guild — the documented guild line for the city's visual artists (no Fort Wayne "Art League" appears in the record reached)…
Fort Wayne
- 1959The theatre that sold for one dollar
The city gave the room a $15,000 facelift and reopened it in the fall of 1959 as the Morris Civic Auditorium.
South Bend
- 1959The defense decades: missile cases and the last fuel cells
From 1959 the plant made missile components: case insulation and filament-wound motor cases for the Minuteman intercontinental missile and the Navy's Polaris submarine missile, with over six million dollars of tooling in continuous use on three shifts…
Mishawaka
- 1959"The largest margin in the city's history" — Canfield, 1959
The city history's account of Mayor E. F. "Gene" Canfield's election in 1959 — carried in this history's government file and spine at De Kever's strength — holds that he won "by the largest margin in the city's history," the capstone of a career that ran clerk-treasurer, councilman, and three terms as mayor.
Mishawaka
- 1959The reorganization: PLJ, North Liberty, and the John Glenn School Corporation — the date in conflict
Indiana's School Corporation Reorganization Act of 1959 set the frame, but Walkerton's consolidation ran on its own clock, and the record gives that clock two different times.
Walkerton
- 1959The Marlette read, executed whole: the "Proposed Lines" chapter and the 1904 proposal test
Jerry Marlette's Electric Railroads of Indiana (1959) closes its survey with "Proposed Lines" (printed pages 122–131).
Lakeville
- 1959–1964A Lincoln Center for a factory city: the Kahn commission, 1961
The ambition: In 1959 the Fine Arts Foundation studied the needs of arts and culture in Fort Wayne, and the model it chose was the most ambitious in America: Lincoln Center in New York City.
Fort Wayne
- 1959–1964The Lark, and the forty days of the Avanti
Under president Harold Churchill, Studebaker for 1959 cut its full-size body down into the compact Lark — the central body section of the 1953–58 cars carried over, on existing chassis and engines.
South Bend
- 1959–1964The formation of Penn-Harris-Madison
The corporation that schools Granger was made by a statute and a sequence: Indiana's School Corporation Reorganization Act of 1959 (Acts of 1959, ch.
Granger
- 1959–2026Agricultural honors: the two townships' 4-H champions, at the fair record's strength
The 1959 record, from the county's farm paper: the county farm paper of July 24, 1959 carries Clay Township's name at the top of a county contest: twenty-seven girls of St. Joseph County entered the 4-H junior demonstration contest held at the Centre Township School on June 29, and Mary Cronin of Clay Township won it…
Granger
- 1959–todayClassic Products Corp. (Fort Wayne Bowling Supply → The Classic Company → Classic Products Corp.)
Founded: 1959, Fort Wayne. Classic's own company history states it "was started by Bob Carteaux and Marty Schmidt in 1959 as Fort Wayne Bowling Supply (FWBS) in a small pro shop in the Key Lanes Bowling Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana."
Fort Wayne
- 1959–todayThe county ring — East Allen, Northwest Allen, Southwest Allen
What they are: Allen County outside the Fort Wayne Community Schools district is served by three consolidated corporations created under the Indiana School Reorganization Act of 1959, which required districts under 2,000 students to consolidate.
Fort Wayne
- 1959–todayThe federal line II: Brademas to the present holders
Elected in 1958, he held the seat for eleven terms, from 1959 to 1981, rising to House Majority Whip from 1977 to 1981 — the first native-born American of Greek descent elected to Congress — and left the House to become president of New York University, 1981–1992.
South Bend
- 1959–todayBethel's Pilots — the name, the league, and a national ledger of forty-eight
The name: Bethel's own athletics history records that the nickname Pilots was adopted for the men's basketball team by a vote of the Bethel Student Council on 14 December 1959, and spread to the whole program.
Mishawaka