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As of November 2026 · across the line in Mishawaka
American Legion Post 161, Mishawaka — the Ryan A. Balmer Post — stands at 133 E. Mishawaka Avenue, Mishawaka, and is active as of November 2026: the Legion's locator lists it active, telephone 574-255-8319, open Monday and Thursday 5–9 p.m. and Friday 4–9 p.m. Its public course in the record runs from ambition to institution. In 1947 the Legion's own magazine reported that Post 161 had formed a nonprofit corporation and purchased the Normain Heights tract to develop a $2,000,000 veterans' housing project — a post building houses for its own returning generation. The post's Friday fish, chicken, and shrimp fries appear in the Tribune's community-meals listings (February 2024) under its full name, Ryan A. Balmer American Legion Post 161. Its baseball team won the 2007 Plymouth Regional, beating South Bend Post 50. Its member Michael J. Miller, a Vietnam-era Air Force veteran, served as Department of Indiana commander in 2011–12. The county roster (sjcindiana.gov) lists Post 161 at the same address. One item is named as a gap rather than filled: the post's charter or founding date is not printed in any open source reached — the Legion's centennial post-history pages and repeated web sweeps returned no founding date for Post 161 — and the settling source is named: the Department of Indiana's charter records and the post's own historian.
VFW Post 360, Mishawaka, stands at 1307 E. Jefferson Boulevard, Mishawaka, IN 46545, telephone 574-255-4125, and is active as of November 2026: its own site (vfw360.org) is live, and an Indiana Alcohol & Tobacco Commission licence-renewal record for "V. F. W. POST #360" at that address confirms the seat in the state's regulatory record. The hall was renovated in the first quarter of 2016 — lighting, acoustic ceiling, dance floor, new stage, auxiliary bar. The post's present work is the county's veterans' work at street level: it hosts Mishawaka Troop Town, housing for homeless veterans, care of VFW Post 360 at the same Jefferson Boulevard address (Corvias volunteer coverage, October 21, 2026); it co-organizes Mishawaka's Memorial Day Parade and Remembrance Ceremony with Post 161 (art-56-2); and its fall 2026 calendar runs to the season — a Trunk or Treat on October 25, 2026, a craft bazaar on November 7, 2026, and the Michiana Concert Band's Veterans Day concert at the post on November 11, 2026, at 11 a.m. The wars fragment's description of Posts 161 and 360 as "the county's senior posts of their kinds" across the line stands. Post 360's charter date carries the same named gap as Post 161's: not printed in the open sources reached, settling source the VFW's national charter records and the post's own records.
The county roster fetched (St. Joseph County, sjcindiana.gov, "American Legion / VFW Locations") fixes the full serving field around the CDP: South Bend — Legion Posts 50 (1633 N. Bendix Drive), 284 Bendix Aviation Post (23571 Grant Road), 303 (2503 Mishawaka Avenue), 357 (5414 W. Sample Street), and VFW Posts 1167, 8748, and 9820; Mishawaka — Legion Post 161 and VFW Post 360; and the county's smaller seats at Lakeville (Legion 363), New Carlisle (Legion 297), North Liberty (VFW 1954), Osceola (Legion 308), and Walkerton (Legion 189). Joseph Valley Memorial Park flagpoles, stands on that roster, still active into 2026.