The mayors as persons, II: Petro to Doyle, 1930–1959 — the holes printed inside

1930 – 1959

Mason L. Petro, from January 1930 — with the 1934 hole inside his profile: The Political Graveyard's events list documents that on 5 November 1929 Mason L. Petro, a Democrat, was elected mayor of Mishawaka; he took office in January 1930. He was an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 1932, a party post that fits a sitting mayor. The city's Eberhart-Petro golf course still carries his surname; why it does, no source read states, and the name is printed without a reason assigned. The hole: Indiana's city-election cycle shifted by a year in the 1930s, so the next Mishawaka mayoral election fell in November 1934, for a term from January 1935. Whether Petro was re-elected then, or another man took the office, the record read does not say — the Government leg's gap 2, settling sources the Tribune of November 1934 and the later-1930s Polk directories. His administration's working is documented where its head's end is not: the municipal government's "outstanding relationship with the W.P.A.," which built streets, parks, the Battell Park rock garden and the Eberhart-Petro course's stonework through the later 1930s, and the city's centennial in May 1932, in the worst of the Depression, under the administration then in office.

Carl J. Castleman — with his first-election hole inside his profile: The Political Graveyard carries Castleman, a Democrat, as "Mayor of Mishawaka, Ind., 1941-42; defeated, 1942" — a sighting range from the rosters the compilation draws on, not a statement of his term. The hole: on the shifted cadence — elections in 1934, 1938 and 1942 — the reading that fits is that Castleman won in November 1938 and took office in January 1939; but no source read dates his first election, and the cadence reading is printed as a reading, not as the record (Government gap 3). What the record fixes is his end: on 3 November 1942 the Graveyard records Joe A. Brady, Republican, elected, and Carl J. Castleman, Democrat, defeated.

Joe A. Brady, from January 1943 — with his last-day hole inside his profile: Brady was a Mishawaka man in the Graveyard's biography: born in the city on 5 September 1911, a shoe store manager, a Baptist, a member of the Lions and the Eagles. He took the office in January 1943, in the middle of the war; the Graveyard's sighting of him runs "1943-44." He is not the J. C. Brady of the 1921 council roll — that man was of an earlier generation, and the Government and Public Servants fragments keep the two apart. The hole: no source read gives Brady's last day. De Kever, describing the election of 1963, writes of "the Democrats' 16-year hold on the mayor's office" that Margaret Prickett's victory then broke — sixteen years back from January 1964 reaches January 1948, which reads as Brady serving a single term to the end of 1947, beaten or retired at the election of November 1947. That is an inference from De Kever's arithmetic, printed as one; the 1947 election itself — its candidates, its count, whether Brady stood in it — is Government gap 4, settling source the Tribune of November 1947.

E. Spencer Walton — with his elections hole inside his profile: Walton's firmest sighting is first-hand and from across the river: the published minutes of the South Bend Common Council for 27 November 1950 record a CIO resolution addressed jointly to "E. Spencer Walton, Mayor of Mishawaka" and to George A. Schock, Mayor of South Bend. The Political Graveyard carries him as mayor "as of 1950-54." He is the senior of his name: his son, E. Spencer Walton Jr., born in Mishawaka on 22 February 1952, is a Mishawaka lawyer with May Oberfell Lorber since 1979. In 1949 he sat on the Board of Public Works and Safety as mayor, with Clerk Oscar Van De Putte as its secretary, on the directory's page. The hole: whether Walton 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, the sources read do not settle (Government gap 5; settling sources the Tribune of November 1947 and 1951 and the Indiana Year Book rosters).

Albert L. Doyle — with his election hole inside his profile: Doyle, a Democrat, closes the sequence the compilations can see: the Political Graveyard carries him as mayor "as of 1955-59" and as an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Indiana in 1956. In 1956 he sat on the Board of Public Safety as mayor, beside the two uniformed chiefs, on the directory's page. The hole: on the cadence his term runs from January 1956, won at the election of November 1955, to the end of 1959 — the election itself unattested directly in the sources read (Government gap 6; settling source the Tribune of November 1955). His term is the last full term of the sixteen-year hold before Joseph Canfield's.

Sources:

1. The Government fragment of this build — the Dodge/Petro, Castleman/Brady and Walton/Doyle articles whole, and the open-record article's gaps 1–6 with their settling sources.
2. The Public Servants fragment of this build — Walton on the Board of Public Works and Safety in 1949 and Doyle on the Board of Public Safety in 1956, from the Polk directories of those years; the J. C. Brady / Joe A. Brady distinction.