Walton and Doyle: the long Democratic hold

1948 – 1959

E. Spencer Walton: The firmest sighting of Walton in the office is a first-hand one from across the river: the published minutes of the South Bend Common Council for 27 November 1950 record a resolution of the St. Joseph County Industrial Union Council (CIO) addressed jointly to "E. Spencer Walton, Mayor of Mishawaka" and to George A. Schock, Mayor of South Bend — the two cities' mayors taken together as the valley's civic address. The Political Graveyard carries Walton as mayor "as of 1950-54," sightings spanning those years. He is the senior of his name: his son, E. Spencer Walton Jr., born in Mishawaka on 22 February 1952 and a Mishawaka lawyer with May Oberfell Lorber since 1979, is the younger man. What the sources read do not settle is Walton's elections: whether he first won the office in November 1947 — which De Kever's sixteen-year Democratic hold, running from January 1948, would make him — or not until November 1951, with another Democrat in the chair for the first of those terms. He held the office in November 1950 and across 1950–54; the rest is printed in the gaps entry with its settling sources.

Albert L. Doyle: Doyle, a Democrat, closes the sequence the Graveyard can see: it carries him as mayor "as of 1955-59" and as an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Indiana in 1956. On the cadence his term runs from January 1956, won at the election of November 1955, to the end of 1959 — the last full term of the sixteen-year hold before Joseph Canfield's, and the last mayoralty of the stretch the Story of Mishawaka section had named as this section's gap. Between Walton and Doyle the record now has names at every point the compilations and the neighboring city's minutes reach; the holes that remain are of election dates and first days, not of whole administrations.

Sources:

1. City of South Bend, Common Council minutes, 27 November 1950 (docs.southbendin.gov) — "E. Spencer Walton, Mayor of Mishawaka," jointly addressed with Mayor George A. Schock of South Bend.
2. The Political Graveyard, Mishawaka office page and biographies — E. Spencer Walton, mayor as of 1950–54; Albert L. Doyle (Democrat), mayor as of 1955–59, alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Indiana, 1956.
3. May Oberfell Lorber, firm biography of E. Spencer Walton Jr. — born 22 February 1952 in Mishawaka, with the firm since 1979; the identification of the mayor as the senior Walton.
4. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the Democrats' sixteen-year hold on the mayor's office, broken in November 1963.