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1918–2025 · BOUNDARY FOUNDINGS AT FULL STRENGTH · THE GROUND'S OWN TEST PRINTED
The founded-here finance, accounting and survey classes were never swept. Swept now, they resolve into two boundary foundings at full strength, one founding that would not verify, and a tested negative for the ground itself.
The accounting firm is Crowe, and its founding is a county story before it is a firm's: Crowe Chizek was established in South Bend in 1942 by Fred P. Crowe Sr. and Cletus F. Chizek. Crowe had worked in public accounting for years and had served as St. Joseph County auditor for eight years — the keeper of the county's purse turned founder — and Chizek was head of the accounting department at the University of Notre Dame. Crowe Sr. died in 1952; the firm reorganized as Crowe, Chizek and Company, took its first legal partnership in 1962 with six founding partners, joined Horwath International in 1991, renamed itself Crowe Horwath in 2008 and Crowe in 2018, and stands as one of the largest accounting and consulting firms in the United States, still tracing itself to the 1942 South Bend founding. The survey firm is Press Ganey: founded in 1985 in South Bend by Irwin Press, a medical anthropologist, and Rod Ganey, a sociologist-statistician, both then professors at Notre Dame, to measure patient satisfaction by survey; headquartered in South Bend still, at the Ignition Park technology campus, and carried in October 2025 by the announcement that Qualtrics would acquire it for $6.75 billion. The finance company, The Associates, would not verify at founding strength: its corporate record as reached (the Associates First Capital 10-K; the Federal Trade Commission's 2001 action) gives the later course whole — the second-largest independent finance company in the country, headquartered at Irving, Texas, acquired by Citigroup for some $31 billion on November 30, 2000 — but no source reached states where or when it was founded, and the South Bend founding the checklist pattern supposes is therefore carried to the closing article as a named miss, its settling source the International Directory of Company Histories' Associates entry and the Indiana Secretary of State's entity records.
Tested directly against the directory professional headings and the firms' own records: no accounting firm and no survey firm founded in the Granger designated place appears in any source reached. That negative is this row's on-ground finding, and its settling source, should a contrary entity record exist, is the Indiana Secretary of State's business-entity search run against Granger addresses.
Sources: Crowe firm histories (the 1942 South Bend founding by Fred P. Crowe Sr. and Cletus F. Chizek; Crowe's eight years as St. Joseph County auditor; Chizek's Notre Dame accounting chair; the 1952 death, the 1962 partnership, Horwath 1991, Crowe Horwath 2008, Crowe 2018); Michiana Jewish Historical Society, "Crowe." Press Ganey, "Our history," and the company's record (founded 1985, South Bend, by Irwin Press and Rod Ganey of Notre Dame; the Qualtrics acquisition announced October 2025 at $6.75 billion); the Ignition Park headquarters record (1173 Ignition Drive, South Bend). Associates First Capital Corp., Form 10-K (1995) and FTC press release, March 2001 (the Associates' scale, Irving headquarters, and the Citigroup acquisition of November 30, 2000) — searched for a founding statement, none given. Banked Businesses (the dental row; the bank row).