The sesquicentennial, 1983: the ritual, fifty years on

1983 · citywide, with Founder's Day on July 16

The year: Fifty years after Centennial Week, the city ran the same play with new machinery. A fifteen-member Sesquicentennial Commission planned a yearlong celebration for the 150th birthday in 1983: a costume ball in University Park Mall attended by 1,700 people — the mall, opened four years earlier and already the region's commercial center, standing in for the Hotel Mishawaka of 1909 as the city's grand room — a Princess Mishawaka contest, commemorative plates, spoons and glasses, a history book titled A Mishawaka Mosaic, and a live shot on Good Morning America announcing the birthday to a national audience. Founder's Day, on July 16 in Merrifield Park, reenacted the 1932 centennial pageant — the sesquicentennial's centerpiece was a performance of the centennial — alongside musical performances, a softball game between Republicans and Democrats, a beard-growing contest, organized games, and an arts and crafts show; the local genealogical society presented pioneer certificates to eighty Mishawakans descended from settlers present before 1883. The celebration carried its own logo and its own slogan: "Tomorrow Lives in the Light of Our Past."

The event and its meaning: As an event the year is documented at the commission's own size — its ball counted at 1,700, its certificates at eighty, its program day by day for Founder's Day. The comparison Culture draws across the fifty years stands there and is cross-referenced, not repeated: the ritual's elements held almost exactly — the princess, the pageant, the costume ball, the certificates of descent — while the stage and the audience changed, a shopping mall for a hotel and a national morning-television audience for a regional crowd. Between them, the two birthdays bracket the city's event history: 1932 invented the form, and 1983 proved it was a practice, renewed on schedule, by commission.

Sources:

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the Sesquicentennial Commission, the mall costume ball and its 1,700, the Good Morning America shot, A Mishawaka Mosaic, the Founder's Day program of July 16, the pioneer certificates, and the slogan, quoted.
2. Culture section of this history — the sesquicentennial as the ritual renewed, and the fifty-year comparison whole.
3. Malls section of this history — University Park Mall's 1979 opening and regional standing.