The anniversaries as heritage acts

1916 — 2015

At pointer size, by design: The city's birthday parties are gatherings, and they stand whole in the Events account; this entry keeps only what they left behind as heritage. The Historic Pageant of 1916 left its printed book. The centennial of 1923 left its souvenir volume and, five years later, the Rotary marker of the self-marking entry. SB150, the sesquicentennial of the incorporation of 22 May 1865, kept over the weekend of 22–24 May 2015, left the most durable monument of the three: the South Bend River Lights, the interactive light installation over the St. Joseph River dedicated on the birthday's opening evening — proposed to the city by Downtown South Bend in 2012, built of more than eighty fixtures in three parts, and still lit nightly — a sesquicentennial present the city gave itself in permanent form. The honest negative stands in the Events account and is repeated here because a heritage record is where it belongs: the county's centennial in 1930 and the centennial of the city's incorporation in 1965 show no documented South Bend observance in the record reached, and the Homecoming of 1909 survives only as the 1923 volume's citation of it. The city's kept birthdays are 1916, 1923 and 2015; the record shows no others.

Sources:

1. Events account in this record — the 1916 pageant, the 1923 centennial, SB150 (with the River Lights' dedication of 22 May 2015, their 2012 proposal and three-part form), and the documented absence of 1930 and 1965 observances, cross-referenced and not retold.