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1966–2026 · THE GOVERNMENT PARKS.HTML ONLY STATED AS A NEGATIVE
There is no Granger park government, and the record above the ground is a single county institution with an unbroken life: Parks states the negative — no parks department in the CDP, the Harris Township trustee holding two small parks, the county department and Granger Paths' volunteers doing the rest — and names the county board's officers only in passing inside the Anderson Road article. Run as its own course, the government is this. The St. Joseph County Parks and Recreation Board was formed in 1966: the county's own Bendix Woods pages record that the Bendix Corporation donated 175 acres and the Studebaker Clubhouse to the St. Joseph County Parks and Recreation Board in 1966, the gift going to a "newly formed Parks Board," and the South Bend Tribune's centennial account fixes the same year from the other side — Bendix bought the 800-acre proving grounds, donated 175 acres to the county in 1966, "the same year the county founded its parks department." Bendix Woods became the first county park. Its opening year is in conflict, printed whole: the park's historical marker (Historical Marker Database) reads "Bendix Woods County Park opened in 1967"; the Tribune's account reads that it "became the first county park when it opened in 1969." The donation and the board's creation in 1966 are agreed; the opening is not, and both dates stand.
No abolition, no restoration: the board's own minutes and packets run in an unbroken monthly series across the whole span the open record reaches — the board sitting at St. Patrick's County Park, Bendix Woods, Spicer Lake and Ferrettie/Baugo Creek in rotation, electing its officers, passing claims, and reporting through a president and a director in every packet examined from 2016 through the spring of 2026. No minute, plan, or news account in the record searched records the board's abolition, suspension, or re-creation at any point after 1966; the department's succession is a succession of directors under one continuous board, and the negative is stated as tested, on the minutes series itself, not assumed. The board that governs the Granger ground's county park in November 2026 is the board of 1966, sixty years on.
The director line, as far as the open record names it: Evie Kirkwood directed the department for sixteen years, retiring 1 May 2020 — her last board meeting, 21 April 2020, records the board's thanks "for the past 16 years that she has served as parks director," and the department's 2020 State of the County Parks report credits her with "40-plus years of service with the County Parks" and an Indiana Park and Recreation Association Lifetime Achievement Award on her retirement. Her deputy, Steve Slauson, served as interim director from May 2020 and became director in July 2020, with Leslie Witkowski moving from Interpretive Services Manager to deputy director that August (2020 State of the County Parks report). Slauson is the director Parks names in the May 2025 Anderson Road minutes, and he carried the Anderson Trail County Park from planning through construction. He retired in 2026, and the line continues past the fragment: the Tribune (16 September 2026) reports Leslie Witkowski — 28 years with the department — selected as director, assuming the role 19 September 2026, with Parks Board President Larry Catanzarite, the same president named in the Anderson article, announcing her. Directors before Kirkwood's tenure are not named in the open county record reached; that earlier line is a residue gap, settler the Parks Board's own minute books and the department's early annual reports.
The township tier, for completeness: below the county board, the Harris Township trustee's two parks (Brummitt Road, 30 acres; Elm Road, conceived 2015) are carried whole in Parks and are not repeated here; the trustee is an elected township officer, not a park board, and no township park board, park district, or park department has ever existed in either township in the record. The June 2025 bond that funds the Anderson build was a County Council act — Park District bonds up to $6.6 million, passed 6–3 on 10 June 2025, carried in Parks — which is where the money power over this ground has always sat: with the county, never with the CDP.