South Bend, Indiana · 20th century
1950s
75 dated events in 1950s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
20th century 75 dated mentions
1950s
- 1950Miami Hills and Miami Village
The south side's postwar capture is documented to the ordinance number: the Miami Hills Addition — Lots 1 through 251, platted by the Crown Development Company on the west side of Miami Street north of the Erskine Park ground…
- 1950Robert Lowell Miller Jr.: the federal judge from South Bend
Robert Lowell Miller Jr. (born 1950): born in South Bend on 21 November 1950 — the Federal Judicial Center's Biographical Directory of Federal Judges carries the birth in those words — and born and raised here, as the Congressional Record's tribute puts it.
- 1950Frank Sullivan Jr.: the second justice
Frank Sullivan Jr. (born 1950): the Indiana Supreme Court's own biography opens with the tie in its own words: "Sullivan is a native of South Bend."
- 1950LOGAN Community Resources
Founding: LOGAN was founded in 1950 by Joe and Sophie Newman, for their daughter Rita Jo — founded, that is, by two parents for one child, and widened into the county's principal charity for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
- 1950Polio: the children's hospital the state built here
In 1950 the State of Indiana established the Northern Indiana Children's Hospital in South Bend, at 1234 North Notre Dame Avenue, for the children the disease had crippled…
- 1950The state institution in the city: the children's hospital that became a developmental center
The state established the Northern Indiana Children's Hospital in South Bend in 1950, in the polio years, to care for children the disease had crippled; directories place it at 1234 North Notre Dame Avenue.
- 19501950: Faut's Peak, Baker's Trade, the New Young Players
The 1950 Blue Sox finished fifth of eight at 55–55 — a .500 club, a record this history can now state flatly, since the season tables agree on it — but the season matters for three things that had nothing to do with the standings.
- 195027 April 1950: TWA Flight 117 and the red disc
Trans World Airlines Flight 117, a DC-3 flying west from Washington to Chicago at about 200 miles an hour and 2,000 feet, was over northern Indiana on the night of 27 April 1950 when First Officer Robert F. Manning saw a bright light off to the right and well to the rear.
- 1950–1952Charlene Pryer: The Fastest Blue Sox
She came to South Bend in 1950 after four-plus seasons at Muskegon and part of 1950 itself at Kalamazoo. Her 1951 season led the league in four departments: a .312 average, 133 hits, 106 runs and 129 stolen bases, with an All-Star selection at second base; in the last three games of the 1951 final she hit .357.
- 1950–1953The Korean War · forty-three names in the Defense Department's file
Counted in full for this section, it carries forty-three fatal casualties with St. Joseph County as home of record — soldiers, Marines and airmen, from the war's first autumn (a county private died 10 September 1950…
- 1950–1954Sue Kidd: The Arkansas Teenager
She worked her way through the league's lower stops — Muskegon, Peoria, Kalamazoo in one account of the chain — and reached South Bend on August 1, 1950.
- 1950–todayBetter Homes of South Bend · twenty-two couples buy a street in secret
The answer to the redlined map, built by the men the map was drawn against: On 21 May 1950 a group of Black Studebaker workers and their wives incorporated Better Homes of South Bend — and kept it secret on purpose.
- 1951The Urban League: the federal ruling of 1951, the Hering House line, and the fade
The federal register dates the corporation's exemption ruling to March 1951, at 1555 West Western Avenue.
- 1951The Airman the War Never Gave Back: Hugh Maynard Burch
Staff Sergeant Hugh Maynard Burch , of New Carlisle — a town of this county, named here on the county frame exactly as the casualty file carries him — died on 12 April 1951 with his remains not recovered.
- 19511951 — the pennant and the title
The regular season: Under Karl Winsch, the 1951 Blue Sox went 76–36 and won the regular-season pennant outright, clinching first place on September 1 with a 5–1 win over Rockford.
- 19511951: The Pennant and the First Championship
Karl Winsch — Jean Faut's husband, married to her since 1947 — took over the club in 1951, and the Blue Sox won the only true pennant in their history: 76 wins, the most the franchise ever recorded, against 36 losses, built in halves of 38–22 and 38–14, the second-half title theirs outright.
- 1951The factories on film, II — Oliver's picture, and the Bendix negative
The company's own magazine, the Oliver Mirror , reported the premiere in its April 1951 number: Neighbors of the Land , a colour-sound film produced by the Oliver Corporation in collaboration with the Soil Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, was shown on 12 March 1951 in the community…
- 1951Rocco's: twelve seats, 1951, and a seventy-fifth year
In 1951 they opened Rocco's at 537 North St. Louis Boulevard, with her parents, at twelve seats. A second, upscale house, The New Rocco's, ran from 1957 to 1965 alongside it.
- 1951–1957From the air: the 1951 and 1957 series, and the makers no record names
The St. Joseph County Public Library's Local & Family History department keeps the county's early aerial photography as a map collection — its telling as maps is in the Maps file…
- 1951–2026Hugh Maynard Burch — still on the Defense Department's unaccounted-for lists
Staff Sergeant Hugh Maynard Burch, of New Carlisle in this county, 93rd Bombardment Squadron of the 19th Bombardment Wing, went missing in action over the Yellow Sea on April 12, 1951 — one of the Defense Department's 43 St. Joseph County Korean War fatal casualties who also stands on its unaccounted-for list.
- 1951–todayVietnam, Korea, and the parks of remembrance
A park named for veterans, 1951: The city's park record carries the first of its postwar statements in a single line of the Parks Department's chronology: "1951 — Veterans Memorial Park established."
- 19521952 — the protest title
The regular season: South Bend finished second in 1952 at 64–45. There was no pennant; the championship, again, would have to come through the playoffs.
- 1952The Walkout: August 30, 1952
The 1952 Blue Sox finished second at 64–45 behind Fort Wayne's pennant winners, with Faut having the finest season of her career — 20–2, a 0.93 earned run average, a .909 winning percentage that stands as the league's single-season record, 114 strikeouts, the pitching triple crown shared only in its wins column, where…
- 1952The Protest Series: The 1952 Final Against Rockford
For the second straight year South Bend had beaten Rockford for the championship after trailing two games to none — in 1952 counting the erased game, it had trailed in a sense three times.
- 1952July 20, 1952: South Bend's one NASCAR race
Two hundred laps on the park's dirt: On Sunday, 20 July 1952, NASCAR's Grand National division — the top stock-car series in the country — raced at Playland Park: 200 laps, 100 miles, on the park's half-mile dirt oval, before about 3,700 spectators, for a purse of $3,425.
- 19528 May 1952: the Mishawaka index case
The record: The Air Force's index for 1952 carries one further St. In Blue Book's usage that evaluation is a statement about the file, not the sky: the report, as it reached the investigators, did not contain enough information to evaluate.
- 195223 July 1952: Captain Kloth's two objects — the county's official Unknown
Case number 1578, in the published list of Blue Book cases officially listed as "Unknown," reads in its summary form: 23 July 1952, South Bend, Indiana, 11:35 p.m.; the witness an Air Force pilot, Captain H. W. Kloth; two bright blue-white objects flew together, and then the rear one veered off, after about nine minutes.
- 19522 August 1952: the Tribune's sky watch
On 30 July 1952, with the Washington sightings still filling the wires, the Associated Press carried a South Bend dispatch across the country: "The Air Force and a newspaper appealed to thousands of persons in two states today to spend two hours watching for 'flying saucers.' The South Bend Tribune enlisted…
- 1952–2016Television: WSBT-TV and the market it made
The first telecast: WSBT-TV first signed on in December 1952 — on the 21st by the Tribune 's own fiftieth-anniversary account; a station reference record gives the 22nd, and the dates stand as the records give them.
- 1953Saint Joseph High School — the Consolidated School
The founding: Saint Joseph High School began classes on September 20, 1953, the product of the merger of South Bend Central Catholic, Saint Joseph’s Academy and South Bend Catholic — which had itself absorbed Saint Hedwig’s high school — as the banked Schools record carries the merger.
- 1953John Laskowski: The Super Sub
John Laskowski was born June 7, 1953, in South Bend, and played at St. Joseph's High School — class of 1971, a year ahead of Abernethy, the two overlapping in the same program — before joining Bob Knight's first recruiting class at Indiana.
- 19531953: The Farewell Season
The six who walked out did not come back, and the 1953 Blue Sox could not replace them: 44–62, fifth of six, out of the playoffs.
- 1953The bookmobile
The library on wheels: In 1953, the library's history records, "the Library's first Bookmobile served residents who were not served by a branch."
- 1953The bookmobile the carmaker built
The vehicle: In 1953 the public library put its first bookmobile on the road — "the Library's first Bookmobile served residents who were not served by a branch," in the library's own history…
- 1953–1954The end of the league, 1953–1954
Faut's career closed in 1953 with her second perfect game. In 1954 the Blue Sox finished second, five games behind Fort Wayne's pennant winners, and reached the playoffs one last time — the seventh playoff appearance in the club's record.
- 1953–1962The Packard merger and the Curtiss-Wright management
In the spring of 1953 Ford began the production drive and discounting war against General Motors that crushed the independents, who could not match Big Three prices: Studebaker's labor costs were the highest in the industry…
- 1953–todayThe Superintendents
The record read for this section carries the office at full size from 1993 forward; of the earlier holders it documents two at their places in the school newspapers of their day — Dr. Alex Jardine, superintendent in 1953, and Monte Sriver, superintendent about 1991.
- 1953–todaySaint Joseph High School
The consolidation: Saint Joseph High School began classes on 20 September 1953, the first consolidated, co-institutional Catholic high school in the South Bend area — one school, boys and girls in separate departments, gathered out of the parish high schools it replaced.
- 1954Kenn Kaufman — the birding authority
The tie, exactly: Kaufman was born in South Bend in 1954 and began birding at the age of six — here. When he was nine the family moved to Wichita, Kansas, and the intensification of the obsession, the teenage travels, and the 1973 record all happened from Kansas and the road.
- 1954The association and the advocates: organized families and citizens
The federal record dates the association's exemption to April 1954, the founding season of Indiana's state association as well; its local officers appear in the record across the decades…
- 1954Tom Abernethy: The City Scoring Record and the Perfect Season
Thomas Craig Abernethy was born May 6, 1954, in South Bend, and at St. Joseph's High School he set the city's scoring record: 648 points in his senior season of 1971–72, 25.9 a game, for a third-ranked Indians team that won 22 games and the South Bend sectional championship.
- 19541954 and the End of the League
Kalamazoo then beat Fort Wayne three games to two for the championship, the deciding game on September 5, 1954, standing as the last game the league ever played — and Dottie Schroeder, who had played the league's first game as a fifteen-year-old Blue Sox shortstop in 1943, won her championship ring in it, as Kalamazoo's shortstop.
- 1954Kenn Kaufman — the field guide, from a South Bend childhood
Kenn Kaufman was born in South Bend in 1954 and began bird-watching here at the age of six; the family moved to Wichita, Kansas, when he was nine, and the record of Famous People carries the tie at that strength — a birth and a childhood start, with the life lived since from Arizona and Ohio.
- 1954Broadmoor Shopping Plaza: the first plaza
The Redevelopment Commission's South Side history records the Broadmoor Shopping Plaza on the northeast corner of Miami and Ireland: a plan of 1954 for a center of 17 stores and 450 parking spaces, built by the Hilton Construction Company of Kenneth Woods, South Bend.
- 1954–1955The first of the great names to go · Singer, 1954
Nine years before the greatest closing, the first one taught the city what a closing announcement sounded like: In April 1954 the Singer Manufacturing Company announced that it would close its South Bend cabinet works…
- 1954–1956The Indiana Toll Road: the northern edge, 1956
The toll road was built past the city's north edge in two years, and a South Bend firm laid its first miles: The Indiana Toll Road Commission's own 1954 report records the start: construction of the $280,000,000 Northern Indiana East–West Toll Road began on 21 September 1954, and the first construction contract went…
- 1954–1963The last chiefs — Nance, Hurley, Egbert, Burlingame
The merger's chief: When Studebaker combined with Packard on 1 October 1954, the Studebaker-Packard Corporation was formed under Packard's president, James J. Nance.
- 1954–2003The Bond-Built System: The Parks Since 1945
Lead: The modern system was built in a thirty-year run of bonds, purchases and small foundings that the department's chronology records year by year, and it begins with a plan: "1954 — First comprehensive park master plan developed."
- 1954–2018The Park Master Plans, 1954–2027
Its first entry is the chronology's: "1954 — First comprehensive park master plan developed." The next three stand at the same depth, dated foundings of a planning habit: "1982 — Five Year master plan completed"; "1987 — Five year master plan completed"; "1998 — Five Year Parks & Recreation Master Plan completed."
- 1954–2025Isiah Whitlock Jr.: the record completed
Isiah Whitlock Jr. (1954–2025): the People section carries this actor compactly, and as a living person. Whitlock was born in South Bend on 13 September 1954 and starred at football at John Adams High School, class of 1972.
- 1955Portage Manor's second life: the county home as a residence for the mentally ill
In 1955 the law itself assigned the role: the Division of Mental Health could place psychiatric-hospital patients in the county home at the state's payment, with quarterly visits to judge each placement.
- 1955Harold Brazier: 105 Wins Out of South Bend
Harold Leon Brazier was born October 22, 1955 — BoxRec gives Indianapolis as the birthplace and South Bend as the hometown; other registers print South Bend as the birthplace, and the conflict stands — and he fought out of South Bend for twenty-two years, one of the few modern fighters to win more than a hundred professional bouts.
- 1955Jerry Scott: the comics page
The tie: Jerry Scott was born in South Bend on May 2, 1955, and was introduced to the newspaper business delivering the South Bend Tribune from his bicycle, in King Features' biography of him.
- 1955Jerry Scott — the comics, written from a Tribune paper route
Jerry Scott was born in South Bend on 2 May 1955 — and his publisher's biography ties the birth to the trade in one stroke: he was introduced to the newspaper business delivering the South Bend Tribune from his bicycle, on the paper route that preceded the career.
- 1955–1973The open-housing fight · William Morris, the realtors' board, and the ordinance of March 1968
Thirteen years from an institute of one man to the law of the city: The organized campaign began in 1955 , when William R. Morris — Central High School class of 1939, an Army Air Corps veteran, and since 1948 the proprietor of the city's first Black real-estate agency — launched the Institute for Minority Housing .
- 1956Timothy J. Roemer: congressman and ambassador, born here
Timothy John Roemer (born 1956): in the Public Servants record Roemer stands in the House succession and nowhere at entry size; the sweep enters him at the size the official biography supports.
- 1956Jean Charlot at Saint Mary's: the Saints of the Arts
In 1956 she commissioned the French artist Jean Charlot — then conveniently at work at the University of Notre Dame — to paint frescoes of the twelve Saints of the Arts, in separate frames on the exterior walls of O'Laughlin Auditorium, at the main entrance of what became the Moreau Center for the Arts.
- 1956The west side's halls: the Dyngus circuit
The circuit's anchors, as the Events record names them: the West Side Democratic Club, manning its post on the festival's circuit since 1956; the Crumstown Conservation Club; and the M.R. Falcons, whose Nest #4 on Keller Street took the 2026 celebration when renovations displaced it.
- 1956–1990The Archive and the Schoolyard: Where the County's Telling Was Filed
The collection: the children's rhymes, the playground games, the jokes, the beliefs and the local legends of Indiana schoolyards were, for a generation, collected as scholarship down in Bloomington: the Indiana University Folklore Archives, established in 1956 by Richard M. Dorson of the IU Folklore Institute, built…
- 1957The regulated era: four carriers on the April 1957 timetable
The fullest early snapshot of airline South Bend is a timetable: The Official Airline Guide for April 1957 shows four carriers working the field — North Central Airlines with ten weekday departures, United with nine, Lake Central with six, and Trans World Airlines with three.
- 1957Drag racing: the strip South Bend never had
In April 1957 the Riley High School newspaper, the Hi-Times , editorialized for one: "If the community of South Bend had a drag-strip it would give these would-be-engineers a perfect place to test their automotive ideas."
- 1957January 1957: the year's first index page
The record: The Air Force's index for 1957 opens its January page with a South Bend case — the first data line under the month's heading in both digitized copies of the index.
- 1957The South Bend Civic Theatre
The city's own company was founded in 1957 by two Notre Dame graduates, and it has played every year since — the longest continuous stage institution in this record.
- 1957–1981The City's Other Zoo: Storyland at Rum Village
Rum Village Park, on the city's south side — acquired in 1916 for forty-five thousand dollars — opened Storyland Zoo in 1957, a children's zoo of farm animals and nursery-rhyme exhibits, with a children's train that began the same year and wound through the park.
- 1957–2007The firehouse theatre: Civic Theatre, 1957
The company: The South Bend Civic Theatre was founded in 1957, and it bills itself as the oldest continuously operating community theatre company in the South Bend and Mishawaka area.
- 1957–2009South Bend Civic Theatre: the children's stage
South Bend Civic Theatre was founded in 1957 and is the oldest continuously operating community theatre in the South Bend and Mishawaka area.
- 1958The Scholarship Foundation of St. Joseph County: the county's own scholarship endowment
As Jeff Rea of the Regional Chamber wrote in the South Bend Tribune in January 2026: "Hats off to the community leaders who, in 1958, recognized how critical education is to the future success of our students and launched an effort to ensure that every St. Joseph County high school student with academic qualifications…
- 1958The distinction · the "South Bend Shovel Slayer" is a story from a film
The story comes from the film Home Alone (1990), where it is a tale an older brother tells to frighten a younger one about their reclusive neighbor, "Old Man Marley" — a man said to have murdered his family and half the block in 1958 and to have escaped justice ever since.
- 1958Dickie Thon: Born Here, and the Fastball
Richard William Thon was born June 20, 1958, in South Bend, because his father Fred — a Puerto Rican whose own playing career in the Dodgers' organization had ended with an arm injury — was finishing a business degree at Notre Dame.
- 1958The price: Paul Howe, 1958
Recorded plainly, as the sanctioning body recorded it: USAC's own review of its 1958 National Midget season carries the death whole.
- 1958Ironwood and Jackson: the fair buys its home
Forty acres, again: In 1958 the incorporated fair purchased forty acres at the corner of Ironwood and Jackson in South Bend, the address the grounds carry today as 5117 South Ironwood Drive.
- 1958–todayThe Stanley Clark School
Founded: The city's independent school was founded in 1958 by Mary (Mollie) Bernard, supported by her husband Leon, as the Mary Reid Cleland School — named for Mary's grandmother, a schoolteacher in Scotland.
- 1959The theatre that sold for one dollar
The city gave the room a $15,000 facelift and reopened it in the fall of 1959 as the Morris Civic Auditorium.
- 1959–1964The Lark, and the forty days of the Avanti
Under president Harold Churchill, Studebaker for 1959 cut its full-size body down into the compact Lark — the central body section of the 1953–58 cars carried over, on existing chassis and engines.
- 1959–todayThe federal line II: Brademas to the present holders
Elected in 1958, he held the seat for eleven terms, from 1959 to 1981, rising to House Majority Whip from 1977 to 1981 — the first native-born American of Greek descent elected to Congress — and left the House to become president of New York University, 1981–1992.