Fort Wayne, Indiana · 20th century
1940s
64 dated events in 1940s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
20th century 64 dated mentions
1940s
- 1940Two fields, two names: the settlement of 1941
How Fort Wayne got an airport named Smith and an airport named Baer: In 1940 the War Department came to Fort Wayne.
- 1940The quiet anniversaries: 1940, 1944, 1966, 1976
In 1940 the sesquicentennial that Fort Wayne did observe was scholarly: a Harmar Sesquicentennial Symposium, held at Fort Wayne in memory of the 150th anniversary of General Joseph Harmar's 1790 expedition against the Miami, with three speakers on the expedition's phases…
- 1940Powers Hamburgers: the slider house on Harrison Street
Leo, who had grown up in northeast Indiana, came home and opened the Fort Wayne Powers on South Harrison Street in 1940; the house's own history gives the day as 30 April 1940.
- 1941Bruce Nauman — a founder of post-minimal art, born here
The tie, stated precisely: Bruce Nauman was born in Fort Wayne on 6 December 1941.
- 1941Baer Field · the wartime installation
The city took options on some 700 acres southwest of town; when the War Department decided in January 1941 to build if the land could be had by 1 February, thirty local businessmen signed notes totaling the 125,000 dollars needed, four banks advanced the city the money, landowners were given fifteen days to vacate…
- 1941A Rhodes claim that does not hold
The published obituary of Sharon Adele Ruhl DesRosiers (1941–2016), born and raised in Fort Wayne, says she "attended Indiana University as a Rhodes Scholar" and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in comparative literature there.
- 1941James Clapper: the intelligence chief born here
The claim: James Robert Clapper Jr. was born on 14 March 1941 in Fort Wayne, the son of an Army signals intelligence officer, First Lieutenant James Robert Clapper, whose trade the son inherited.
- 1941–1944The turbosupercharger: produced here at a scale no other factory matched
When war came, the British government placed work on key fighter-aircraft components with GE in the United States, and Fort Wayne was chosen to produce the turbosupercharger; the United States government bought the Taylor Street land for a dedicated plant, and ground was broken on 6 December 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor.
- 1941–1945Baer Field and the war plants
In January 1941 the War Department told the city it would build one of thirty-eight new bases here if the land were in hand by 1 February; local businessmen borrowed $125,000 from four banks, the city bought some 700 acres southwest of town and donated it on the condition the field revert to the community after the war.
- 1941–1945The Second World War · Baer Field and the county's war
Baer Field was built in 1941 for some $10 million and named for First Lieutenant Paul Baer, a Fort Wayne native and First World War ace credited with 16 victories in the wing's own fact sheet.
- 1941–1945The truck plant at war: the M-5-6 and the Lend-Lease line
Fort Wayne's war truck: When the Army standardised its 2½-ton 6×6 cargo truck designs in 1940–41, International Harvester's design — the M-5-6 — was put into production at Fort Wayne in 1941.
- 1941–1946Bobby McDermott: the greatest player in the world, in a piston town
Robert Frederick McDermott (7 January 1914 - 3 October 1963) was a 5-foot-11 guard from New York whom Fred Zollner brought to Fort Wayne in 1941 for the first season of his Zollner Pistons in the National Basketball League, on a five-figure salary, after McDermott had played against the Pistons the year before and…
- 1941–todayThe modern organizations in brief · leagues, clubs and professional women
The club movement's descendants: the Junior League of Fort Wayne was formed in 1941 — the League's own date; its federal recognition followed in December 1942 — and has invested, by its own account, more than a million dollars and uncounted volunteer hours in the community since…
- 1941–todayBruce Nauman: born in Fort Wayne, 1941
Bruce Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on 6 December 1941.
- 1942The war years: the showrooms empty
On 2 January 1942 the Indianapolis Times carried the Office of Production Management's ruling under the headline "Sales of New Autos Halted": no dealer could legally sell a new vehicle, not even the cars standing in show windows and warehouses, and the roughly 450,000 new cars then in dealers' hands across the country…
- 1942–1963War work · the factory gate, 1942–1963
Late 1942, mid-1943: War production broke the barrier the 1920s had built.
- 1942–1995Max Altekruse: fifty years an artist for hire
The career: In the summer of 1942 he married Mary Jane Long, and went to war, three years of service in the South Pacific.
- 1943The double ace · Walker Melville "Bud" Mahurin, in brief
His Distinguished Service Cross, in Headquarters, European Theater of Operations, General Orders No. 96 (16 December 1943), was for aerial combat on 4 October 1943 as a captain flying a P-47 with the 63d Fighter Squadron, 56th Fighter Group, escorting withdrawing bombers…
- 1943STAR Financial Bank
Founded: In 1943 Selah G. Wright, Thomas Marcuccilli, Arthur Hodson and Ralph Marcuccilli, with other local businessmen, bought the Upland Branch of the Citizens State Bank of Fairmount for $28,000 — the seed of the bank.
- 1943Turnstone: from the Society for Crippled Children
Founding: Turnstone was founded in 1943 as the Allen County Society for Crippled Children, formed — in its own history's words — to continue the bedside-teaching programs then being eliminated by the Junior League, for children whose disabilities kept them out of ordinary classrooms.
- 1943E. Jean Carroll: raised on Illsley Place
The claim: Elizabeth Jean Carroll was born on 12 December 1943 in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in Fort Wayne, the oldest of four children on Illsley Place, in a house where, by her own telling, the magazines arrived in stacks.
- 1943–todaySuperior Iron & Metal → OmniSource Corporation (OmniSource, LLC)
Founded: 1943, Fort Wayne.
- 1944The trade, part two: Harvester's Fort Wayne branch house sold the tractors the plant did not build
Department of Treasury , 322 U.S. 340 (1944), the Court described the company's Indiana footprint to decide its tax case: Harvester maintained manufacturing plants at Richmond and Fort Wayne, Indiana, and selling branches at Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Fort Wayne, and Evansville, each branch serving an assigned…
- 1944Magnavox · the defense-electronics house
The Government and Industrial side of the Fort Wayne works was in war production by the early 1940s: a federal court filing in the company's successor chain records Magnavox Government and Industrial operating a New Haven Avenue plant from 1944 to 1946 assembling radio and signal-detection equipment, and by 1952 the…
- 1944Brookside: preservation by stewardship
In 1944 the Basses' daughter sold the house and more than sixty-five acres to the Sisters of Saint Francis of Perpetual Adoration, who moved their college from Lafayette, where they had founded it in 1890, and made Brookside its centerpiece.
- 1944Cancer Services of Northeast Indiana
Founding: In 1944, in the agency's own 75th-anniversary account, a Women's Field Army, the Fort Wayne Jaycees and a volunteer named Robert Punsky founded the Allen County Cancer Society as a branch of the American Cancer Society — part of the wartime crusade that made cancer a public cause.
- 1944The Fort Wayne Philharmonic
A society, then an orchestra: The Fort Wayne Philharmonic was founded in 1944 as the Philharmonic Society of Fort Wayne, Inc., organized by citizens under Carl Light, the society's first president, who wanted to raise the standard of orchestral performance in the city.
- 1944–1951"Killer in the Rain" · the murders of 1944–45 and the three men accused
Wilhelmina "Billie" Haaga, 38, a defense worker at Inca Manufacturing, was attacked on the night of February 2, 1944, near the Maumee River off South River Road.
- 1944–todayThe 765 — the locomotive that still works here
The engine: One Fort Wayne train is famous far beyond the freight districts: Nickel Plate Road No. 765, an S-2 Berkshire steam locomotive built by the Lima Locomotive Works in September 1944 for the Nickel Plate's fast freights.
- 1945The council that speaks for all of them · the Allen County Council of Veterans Organizations
The Allen County Council of Veterans Organizations was started in 1945, in the council's own account, by a group of veterans headed by Frank L. Barnett, Albert N. Smith, Corley L. Crouch, Art Wilkie, and Henry Radke; its first by-laws were ratified in May of 1945.
- 1945The Marine Corps League · from the 1945 detachment to Pride and Purpose
A Fort Wayne detachment of the Marine Corps League stood among the charter members of the county veterans council in 1945.
- 1945The shrine on O'Day Road · the Veterans National Memorial Shrine & Museum
Eric Scott, a Fort Wayne soldier of the 3rd Infantry Division's 6th Combat Engineers, came through the Battle of the Marne in 1918 having promised that no veteran would be forgotten; in 1945 he and his wife Cleo bought forty acres at Yellow River and O'Day roads, near Arcola, to keep it.
- 1945–1950Dottie Collins: the Strikeout Queen of the Daisies
Dorothy Wiltse Collins (23 September 1923 - 12 August 2008) was born in Inglewood, California, and came to Fort Wayne with a ballclub: she had pitched her rookie season of 1944 for the Minneapolis Millerettes, going 20-16 with a league-high 205 strikeouts, and when the franchise moved to Fort Wayne in 1945 and became…
- 1945–1954The Daisies whole, 1945–1954
The Fort Wayne Daisies were the city's one great women's team: ten seasons in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, 1945 to 1954, the whole of the league's heartland era.
- 1945–1954The Fort Wayne Daisies, 1945–1954
The Fort Wayne Daisies joined the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1945, taking the place of the departed Minneapolis Millerettes, and won their first game on 24 May 1945.
- 1945–2026The smaller banners · Navy Club, Korean War veterans, Jewish War Veterans, the 40 et 8, and the rest
Ship No. 48 of the Navy Club USA was Fort Wayne's own ship, a charter member of the county council in 1945; a 1955 Fort Wayne obituary still records a local woman, Mary E. Ensley, as a member of its auxiliary alongside the VFW Auxiliary.
- 1945–todayHardware Wholesalers, Inc. → Do it Best Corp.
Founded: 28 June 1945, Fort Wayne.
- 1945–todayDana Corporation — the Fort Wayne (Salisbury Axle) plant
Founded (the plant): In 1945 the Spicer/Dana company began building a massive Fort Wayne plant for its Salisbury Axle division; the plant was built in 1946 — equipment installed that year was still in service in the 2020s.
- 1946Baer Field comes home: the municipal airport, 1946–1991
In 1946 the city bought the southwest field from the General Services Administration for one dollar and renamed it Fort Wayne Municipal Airport, though everyone went on calling the whole complex Baer Field, a habit the Air National Guard's return in 1951 fixed in place for good.
- 1946The trunk era: TWA, Chicago & Southern, United, jets
Two airlines the first year; the third in 1947: When Baer Field opened to civil use in 1946, two passenger airlines served it: TWA, which had come up the road from Smith Field, and Chicago & Southern Airlines.
- 1946The Blacksnakes · the 122nd Fighter Wing as a standing wing
On 24 May 1946 the group was redesignated the 122nd Fighter Group and allotted to the Indiana Air National Guard, with extended federal recognition at Stout Field, Indianapolis, on 9 December 1946.
- 1946Fort Wayne Metals: from recording wire to medical wire
Ardelle Glaze founded Fort Wayne Metals in 1946 to make magnetic recording wire — the founder's life and his first company, which by his son Scott's account made eighty percent of the recording wire used in America before tape displaced it, are the Founders & CEOs record's, cross-referenced here.
- 1946Don Hall's: the drive-in that became a dining dynasty
Meat, land, and a drive-in: Don Hall came out of the meat business with a piece of land and opened a drive-in on Bluffton Road in 1946.
- 1946–1947The expressway fight · the referendum that saved East Central
A road through the neighborhood: In mid-1946 Fort Wayne's civic leaders conceived the Anthony Wayne Parkway — intersecting expressways across the heart of the city to revive the downtown — with an east-west road drawn through the center of the east-central district, where almost all Black Fort Wayners lived.
- 1946–todayThe 122nd Fighter Wing · the Blacksnakes
The 122nd Tactical Fighter Group was formed on 9 December 1946 at Stout Field, Indianapolis, and its 163rd Fighter Squadron was federally recognized at Baer Field on 10 November 1947 , under Major William R. Sefton, flying F-51 Mustangs.
- 1946–todayFort Wayne Metals (Fort Wayne Metals, Inc. → Fort Wayne Metals Research Products Corp.)
Founded: 1946, Fort Wayne.
- 1947Park Center: the child guidance clinic becomes a mental health center
Park Center's own published history traces its start to the Fort Wayne Child Guidance Clinic "as early as 1947" — a small outpatient clinic for troubled children, of the kind then spreading through American cities.
- 1947The national frame: 1947 and the Air Force investigations
The frame: Fort Wayne's record sits inside a national one that begins, by the usual reckoning, on 24 June 1947, when private pilot Kenneth Arnold reported nine bright objects in a chain near Mount Rainier, Washington, moving, in his phrase, like a saucer skipped across water…
- 1947Dave Thomas: formed at the Hobby House
In 1947 the family landed in Fort Wayne and the fifteen year old took a job as a busboy at the Hobby House restaurant.
- 1947–1956Medicine: the modest record, kept modest — a powder, a syndrome, and a negative
In 1947 Roy Schomburg, a longtime Fort Wayne pharmacist, with his father Carl, patented Schomburg Stomach Powder — a bismuth subgallate preparation, in pharmacist John Rogers's account of Indiana's medical inventions "concocted and finally patented" here, a member of the antacid family the public now knows through Pepto-Bismol.
- 1947–1956"Elevate the Nickel Plate" — the north side waits forty years, 1947–1956
The project: In 1947 Mayor Harry Baals signed the agreement with the railroad to elevate the tracks at seven crossings.
- 1947–1991Drive-ins and the cruise: the car as the evening's room
Allen County's first, on the Journal Gazette's 2020 history, was the Fort Wayne Drive-In at 5800 Bluffton Road, opened in 1947; the Cinema Treasures record dates the same theatre to 1940 with a 712-car field, and the conflict stands as found.
- 1947–todayThe 1-293rd Infantry · the Nightfighters
The 1st Battalion, 293rd Infantry — the "Nightfighters," of the 76th Mobile Brigade Combat Team, 38th Infantry Division — was organized in 1947 with its headquarters at Fort Wayne, where Headquarters Company and Company B remain.
- 1947–todayThe county's own door · from the Veterans' Aid Commission to the service office
The 1947 community directory lists the machinery whole: a Veterans Administration Sub-Regional Office in the Purdue Building at 220 East Jefferson Street, serving eleven counties with pensions, hospitalization, insurance, education, and burial allowances…
- 1948Markers and trails: heritage on the street
The state's short list, the street's long one: The Indiana Historical Bureau's own county list carries eight state historical markers for Allen County, and their dates draw the program's local arc: Site of Fort Miamis (1948), Camp Allen 1861-64 (1963), Site of Hardin's Defeat (1966), Home of Philo T. Farnsworth…
- 1948–1954June Peppas: the Fort Wayne girl who won the last game ever played
She went to spring training at Opa-locka, Florida, in 1948 and was assigned to her hometown Fort Wayne Daisies, a first baseman who also pitched, in the league's first overhand seasons.
- 1948–1968Fort Wayne Transit — the private bus company, 1948–1968
The sale: In 1948 the Indiana Service Corporation — a utility holding company, in the age when utilities were getting out of the transit business — sold Fort Wayne's transit property to a private company, Fort Wayne Transit.
- 1948–2018Presidents in Fort Wayne
The visits the record can stand behind, in one entry. Harry Truman's special train stopped on 4 June 1948 — he arrived at 1:13 p.m. on the “nonpolitical” tour the Indianapolis Times covered that day.
- 1949The veterans' hospital: the Fort Wayne VA Medical Center, 1949
The Fort Wayne VA Medical Center, on Lake Avenue, opened in 1949 as a hospital in its own right, offering primary and secondary medical and surgical services to the veterans of northeastern Indiana.
- 1949The summer stage: Foellinger Theatre
Music under the sky: In 1949 Helene Foellinger, publisher of the News-Sentinel, gave Fort Wayne an open-air theatre in Franke Park in memory of her father, Oscar G. Foellinger, the paper's former publisher.
- 1949Shelley Long: Diane Chambers and the 1983 Emmy
The tie: Shelley Long was born in Fort Wayne on August 23, 1949, in the Indian Village neighborhood, and raised here — Kekionga Junior High School, then South Side High School.
- 1949Paul Watters, Daniel Baker, and the school-picture era
Paul Watters, a 1947 graduate of Central High School, began in photography in 1949 at the A & I Leather & Camera Shop, buying his first camera that year — a Crown Graphic 4×5, the press camera of the era.
- 1949Shelley Long: Diane Chambers, from Indian Village
The claim: Shelley Lee Long was born on 23 August 1949 in Indian Village, Fort Wayne, the only child of Leland and Ivadine Long, both of them teachers, her father a rubber industry man turned teacher.
- 1949–1951From Farnsworth to L3Harris · the imager line
The year is carried in the sources two ways: the ACGSI people record, citing Michael Hawfield's Cityscapes history, dates ITT Aerospace Optical Division's purchase of Farnsworth to 1949, while ITT's corporate history dates ITT's purchase of Farnsworth's television company to 1951.