The Repeat-Giver Course: Four Giving Lives Tested for a Second Gift

Bendix · South Bend Audubon Society · Carnegie · County repeat benefactors (boundary)

Lead: A major donor who gives once is an event; a donor who gives again is a relationship. Tested donor by donor, only one of the town's four known givers shows a documented second gift on this ground — and it is the smallest of them.

Bendix Corporation — one great gift, then a sale, not a second gift. The 1966 gift stands as banked: Bendix bought the roughly 800-acre Studebaker Proving Ground and donated 175 acres including the clubhouse and the STUDEBAKER tree sign to the newly formed St. Joseph County Parks and Recreation Board, creating the county's first county park (Bendix Woods). The county parks record adds a 1969 transaction in which approximately 20 additional acres were sold to County Parks, bringing the park to about 195 acres. A sale is not a second donation, and it is printed as a sale. No later Bendix charitable gift to the town, the township, the schools, or the parks on this ground was found in the parks, National Register, or company-history record read for this section. Bendix's own course here after 1966 was as an operator — it kept and used the remaining proving-ground acreage as a test facility — until the 1996 Bosch succession. Giving life: one gift, 1966; no second gift documented.

South Bend Audubon Society — the one true repeat giver. First gift, 1978, as banked: the Society bought the original 40 acres at Spicer Lake from The Nature Conservancy and donated the land to the County Parks; the preserve was dedicated under the Indiana Nature Preserve Act on May 31, 1978. The county parks master-plan record then states, in so many words, that “additional acquisitions continued through 2004 with support from the Audubon Society and the Land [and Water Conservation Fund]” as the preserve grew from 40 acres to 320 acres around Spicer and Lancaster Lakes. That is a second-gift course — sustained acquisition support across 1978–2004 — even though parcel-by-parcel dollar figures are not printed in the parks summary. Individual movers are named in the press record: Tom Stankus and Victor Riemenschneider, prime movers in what was then the South Bend Audubon Society, led the Spicer Lake effort and later received a National Audubon Society award for it (South Bend Tribune, 2005, via ProQuest summary). Giving life: 1978 gift plus documented continuing support to 2004 — this section's one confirmed repeat giver.

Carnegie — one gift, by design. The town's library is a 1917 Carnegie benefaction (Town Hall / Carnegie Library, New Carlisle, St. Joseph County, dated 1917 in the Indiana Carnegie survey). The Carnegie library program was structurally a one-building program: 164 Indiana public libraries from 156 grants totaling $2,508,664 (1901–1918 statewide), each town receiving its building grant and thereafter maintaining the library from local taxation as the grant terms required. No second Carnegie grant to New Carlisle — for an addition, a branch, or a second building — appears in the Indiana Carnegie list as read. The later “Endowment-era pattern” sometimes confused with Carnegie — the Lilly Endowment's library policy — in fact runs the other way for this town (see the Lilly article above: libraries outside Marion County declined except by initiative). Giving life: one gift, 1917; no second gift, and none was to be expected under the program's own terms.

The county's repeat benefactors — boundary, printed as boundary. The Joan Kroc pattern — repeated, very large gifts — belongs to South Bend (the Kroc Center and related Salvation Army giving), not to New Carlisle or Olive Township, and no Kroc gift on town ground was found or is claimed. The same discipline applies to Notre Dame–linked and South Bend hospital and university benefactors generally: they are the sister city's giving lives. On town ground itself, the repeat-giver test therefore closes 1-for-4: Audubon yes; Bendix, Carnegie, and the imported county pattern no — each “no” stated with its instrument, not as an absence of generosity but as an absence in the record searched.

Sources:

1. National Register nomination, Studebaker Clubhouse and Tree Sign (NRHP 85002430, entered Sept. 18, 1985), npgallery.nps.gov — 1966 sale to Bendix; donation of 175 acres incl. clubhouse and tree sign to St. Joseph County Parks and Recreation Board. Read in full.
2. St. Joseph County Parks, Bendix Woods park histories and Five Year Master Plan 2019–2023, sjcparks.org — 175 acres donated 1966, first county park; c. 20 acres sold to County Parks in 1969; park now c. 190–195 acres.
3. St. Joseph County Parks, Spicer Lake Nature Preserve master-plan summaries, sjcparks.org / stjoepros.org — original 40 acres purchased from The Nature Conservancy by the South Bend Audubon Society in 1978 and donated to County Parks; acquisitions continued through 2004 with Audubon Society support; preserve now 320 acres.
4. Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science, Spicer Lake papers — preserve dedicated May 31, 1978, under the Nature Preserve Act of 1967; purchase by The Nature Conservancy in conjunction with the South Bend Audubon Society and a federal grant, conveyed to the county board.
5. List of Carnegie libraries in Indiana (Carnegie Corporation grant data) — 164 libraries, 156 grants, $2,508,664, 1901–1918; Indiana Carnegie survey entry: “New Carlisle – Town Hall/Carnegie Library, 1917 (St. Joseph County).”