The city's own key: the documented presentations

1997 — 2024

The honor and its limit: The Key to the City is South Bend's own ceremonial honor, given by the mayor, and the city publishes no roll of its recipients. What follows is the documented record — the presentations the press and the institutions preserved — printed at exactly that size: seven named presentations across twenty-seven years, with the companion honor of a mayoral day beside them. The earliest documented here is a physician's: Dr. George B. Plain received the Key to the City in 1997, and at the community dinner marking his retirement the mayors and the county gave him the keys of South Bend, Mishawaka, and St. Joseph County together, with Mayor Stephen Luecke proclaiming 3 April 2001 as Dr. George B. Plain Day. Rabbi Morley Feinstein received the keys to South Bend and Mishawaka from their mayors in his South Bend years, and was made an honorary citizen in perpetuity.

The entertainer's key is the one the national rosters remember: in 2012 Mayor Pete Buttigieg gave the key to the comedian Jerry Seinfeld. On 4 June 2019 John Affleck-Graves received the keys of all three jurisdictions — South Bend's from Mayor Buttigieg, Mishawaka's from Mayor Dave Wood, and the county's from Commissioners President Andy Kostielney — on the morning of his Sagamore. Mayor James Mueller gave the key to Debra Stanley, founder and executive director of the HIV and social-justice organization Imani Unidad, in September 2023, and to Karrah Herring, a South Bend native serving as the state's chief equity, inclusion and opportunity officer. And on 15 January 2024, at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Recognition Breakfast, Mayor Mueller presented the key to the city to the Rev.

John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame's president, as Mayor Wood of Mishawaka presented his city's key beside him. The mayoral day, the key's companion: Mayor Buttigieg's proclamation of 7 May 2016 as Tsung Yeh Day, honoring the retiring symphony conductor, stands in the symphony's record.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, obituary of Dr. George B. Plain, 22 January 2003 — the Key to the City in 1997; the three keys at the retirement dinner; Dr. George B. Plain Day, 3 April 2001.
2. Shalom Hartman Institute, biography of Rabbi Morley Feinstein — the keys to the cities of South Bend and Mishawaka and the honorary citizenship.
3. The national roster of Keys to the City in the United States — Jerry Seinfeld, South Bend, 2012, from Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
4. Notre Dame News, 5 June 2019 (Affleck-Graves) and 16 January 2024 (Jenkins) — the 2019 three-key presentation and the 15 January 2024 presentation by Mayor Mueller at the MLK breakfast.
5. South Bend Tribune report, 4 September 2023 — the key presented to Debra Stanley by Mayor Mueller; Indianapolis Business Journal, Engage South Bend–Elkhart (2023) — Karrah Herring's key from Mayor Mueller; NCPA biography of Tsung Yeh — Tsung Yeh Day, 7 May 2016.