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1946–1951 AND THE CLOSING RECORD · SOUTH BEND MOTOR SPEEDWAY (BOUNDARY)
The roll is printed as a roll — names, not "many local drivers" — at the size the open record returns, and its limits are stated with it. From the speedway's founding and first seasons: Charlie Van Acker and Charlie Szekendy, driver-builders both; Dick Good, Ebe Yoder and Bob Newton, the early midget favourites of 1946. From the stock-car record the Tribune preserved: Guy Smith of Berrien Springs, Michigan, winner of the 25-lap feature on the Saturday before 25 September 1951, and Paul Hunsberger of Wakarusa, who lowered the track record to :15.23 that week — visitors and neighbours, printed with their hometowns as the record gives them, because a home track's roll includes the men who came to beat its own. From the closing record of 2024: the Sauer family as racer-owners, and the 120 entries of "The Last Lap" weekend standing unnamed in the account reached — a field, not a roll. No driver of the roll is given an Osceola hometown in any source reached; the quarter-mile's kept names are South Bend, Wakarusa and Berrien Springs names.
Named gap. A full home drivers' roll — the weekly winners, champions and regulars of the speedway's eight decades, season by season — lives in the track's programmes and results and the Tribune's sports pages, neither openly searchable to that depth. Settler: South Bend Motor Speedway programmes and results; the South Bend Tribune speedway file; Kiracofe, History of Osceola (1988), for any Osceola-named regular the programmes carry. The roll above is the open record's whole return, printed without inflation.
Sources: SPEED SPORT closing record (May 2024) — Van Acker, Szekendy, Good, Yoder, Newton; the Sauer ownership. South Bend Tribune, "Headlines in History" excerpt of 25 September 1951 — Guy Smith (Berrien Springs) and Paul Hunsberger (Wakarusa), the :15.23 track record. Settler named for the full roll as above.