South Bend, Indiana · 20th century
1960s
75 dated events in 1960s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
20th century 75 dated mentions
1960s
- 1960The Studebaker signature and the suburban shift
The first census taken afterward, in April 1970, recorded the city's first decline of the industrial era: 125,580 people, down 5.2 percent from the 1960 peak — while the county around it still grew, up 2.7 percent to 245,045.
- 1960Preservation: the statewide corporation's South Bend office
The largest private preservation corporation working in the city is a statewide one: Indiana Landmarks, founded in 1960 in Indianapolis by Eli Lilly as the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana and renamed Indiana Landmarks in 2010…
- 1960The Soap Box Derby: a national champion in 1960
Gravity's champion: The All-American Soap Box Derby's own roll of champions carries, for 1960, a South Bend name: "1960 – Fredric Lake, South Bend, IN."
- 1960–todayThe controller's desk: the city's purse
The holders the record names: Frank J. Bruggner was city controller when Mayor Voorde died in September 1960, and it was from the controller's desk that he succeeded to the mayoralty itself, as the Government section tells.
- 1961Landmark acts II: urban renewal — what was built, what was demolished, who paid
LaSalle Park, 1961–1964: South Bend's first great renewal fight was not downtown but in LaSalle Park, the Black neighborhood built around Beck's Lake on the west side, where redlining had done its work and the streets were unpaved, the sewers undone.
- 1961The machinery: a zone, an airport, and somebody else's port
The lake port the traffic uses is the Port of Indiana–Burns Harbor, on Lake Michigan in Porter County northwest of the city, one of the three ports of the state authority established in 1961: its grain terminal, on the Ports of Indiana's figures, exported more than 500 million bushels of corn and soybeans between its…
- 1961LaSalle Park: the neighborhood the city built
LaSalle Park is the one neighborhood in South Bend whose creation is fully documented because the city itself was its author: the city purchased Beck's Lake and the LaSalle Park ground in 1959 — the same purchase season in which it bought Leeper Park's ground across town, the parks file records…
- 1961Tom Emmer: a birth, printed as a birth
Tom Emmer (born 1961): the sweep's purest test of the birth-tie rule. The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (E000294) records: born in South Bend, St. Joseph County, Indiana, 3 March 1961.
- 1961Larry Karaszewski: the hometown screenwriter with two Emmys
Larry Karaszewski (born 1961): born in South Bend on 20 November 1961 and raised here — his professional biographies, from the Writers Guild Foundation to FX Networks, state both halves of the tie in those words.
- 1961Larry Karaszewski: born and raised, and the hinge to the local broadcast
The tie: Larry Karaszewski was born in South Bend on November 20, 1961, and raised here — the fullest tie this record prints.
- 1961Dave Williams and Beyond Our Control: the show the teenagers produced
Hamilton chartered the project, and in 1961 the first student company, WJA-TV, took to the air with a thirteen-week series of half-hour shows.
- 1961–1962The Avanti's body supplier, settled
The Molded Fiber Glass Companies' corporate history enters the Avanti in its own list of works, under 1961: "To get the Avanti to market quickly, its body panels were molded of fiberglass not stamped sheet metal."
- 1962The Rivieras — "California Sun," a South Bend Central band
They formed in 1962 as the Playmates and renamed themselves for the Buick Riviera: Marty "Bo" Fortson (vocals and guitar), Joe Pennell (lead guitar), Doug Gean (bass), Otto Nuss (organ), and Paul Dennert (drums), managed by Bill Dobslaw.
- 1962Oaklawn: the Mennonite center that holds the designation
A first board was appointed in 1958; services were provided from a temporary location in Elkhart beginning in July 1962; and Oaklawn's doors formally opened on 11 February 1963 — one of eight Mennonite mental health centers in the country, sponsored in time by the Mennonite Health Services Alliance.
- 1962The Rivieras: five Central High boys at the hinge of the chart
The last hit before the Invasion: The Rivieras were formed in the fall of 1962 in South Bend by five South Bend Central High School students: Marty Fortson, vocals and rhythm guitar; Joe Pennell, lead guitar; Doug Gean, bass; Otto Nuss, organ; and Paul Dennert, drums.
- 1962The Linebacker Lounge: the Backer, across from Notre Dame
In 1962 Myron "Mo" Pottios, a Notre Dame linebacker of 22, borrowed $5,000 from Art "The Chief" Rooney against his future NFL salary and opened the Linebacker Lounge in a structure at 1631 South Bend Avenue previously occupied by Eve's Drive-In.
- 1962–1995Karting: the county's national room
The name descends from a track George Christie built in 1962 near Buchanan, Michigan, which the Lobaugh family ran for seventeen years.
- 1963Dean Norris — Hank Schrader, from Clay High School
Norris was born in South Bend on April 8, 1963, of Hungarian descent — his grandfather came from Tiszadob — in a family where his father, Jack, owned a furniture store.
- 1963Nine days in December · the announcement that ended the automobile century
The firm's record of the closing is Studebaker's to tell; what follows is the city's event: On Monday, 9 December 1963, Studebaker's board voted to close the South Bend plant and consolidate automobile production at Hamilton, Ontario.
- 1963The armory line, II · the settlement of 1963 and the Kemble Avenue ground
South Bend's modern military ground was created by a bridge: Ordinance No. 4561, passed by the Common Council on 11–12 March 1963, records that the construction and reconstruction of the Sample Street Bridge took the sites of both the State Armory and the United States Naval and Marine Corps Training Center…
- 1963The state's markers: twenty-three in the county
Its published list for St. Joseph County — the Bureau's county tally stands at twenty-three markers, the county's run spanning 1963 to 2021 — is enumerated here from the Bureau's own list, at the strength the list gives: twelve stand in South Bend or at its northern edge, nine in Mishawaka, and two in the county's townships.
- 1963–1964December 1963: the closing of the South Bend works
The announcement: The 1964 models sold insufficiently from their introduction, and Egbert was ousted from the presidency (Byers Burlingame succeeded him in November 1963).
- 1963–1965Toro the Ocelot, and the Mid-Century Zoo
In 1963 a capuchin monkey was born at the zoo — the first South American primate born there, a modest milestone that measures how the collection was growing beyond the hardy hoofstock of the 1947 list into species that bred in South Bend.
- 1963–1966Bill Dobslaw and the Riviera label: the record side, at its true size
Bill Dobslaw was twenty-one when he became the Rivieras' manager in 1963 — the band itself, five South Bend Central High School students, is the Music chapter's.
- 1963–2005Freeman-Spicer, and the day the factory closed
After insufficient initial sales of the 1964 models and the ousting of president Sherwood Egbert, Studebaker announced on 9 December 1963 the closure of the South Bend plant.
- 1963–2022Jackie Walorski — five terms in Congress
Jacqueline Renae Walorski was born in South Bend on August 17, 1963, grew up with two older brothers in the city's Gilmer Park neighborhood — her mother a meat cutter at a local grocery, her father a firefighter who also owned an appliance store — went to Hay Elementary, and graduated from James Whitcomb Riley High School in 1981.
- 1963–2026The works today: two buildings, a cleared campus, and a new name on the map
Studebaker abandoned it in December 1963 and sold it a few years later to the city for $1; the city passed it to the South Bend Community School Corporation, which used it as its own headquarters until the fall of 2006.
- 2010sLandmark acts I: the closing, and the government's fifty-year answer
December 1963: The civic fact is simple and total. Studebaker had built vehicles in South Bend for 111 years; at its postwar peak it employed some 24,000 people there, more than the rest of the city's industry combined.
- 1964Vivica A. Fox: born here, raised in Indianapolis, famous everywhere
Vivica A. Fox (born 1964): the second flagged name, entered here whole as her holding entry; the Producers section carries her producing record, and assembly decides her final home.
- 1964"Touchdown Jesus" — the mural's nickname, its stones, and its view
The university's own facilities account gives the mural's dedication at the library's opening, 7 May 1964, and the nickname's origin plainly: "the students (and soon just about everyone else) began to call it" Touchdown Jesus — a student coinage on the university's telling, not a designer's intention.
- 1964Millard Sheets and the Word of Life
It was unveiled at the library's dedication on May 7, 1964. The students renamed it at once and forever: raised arms and all, the figure reads from the stadium as Christ signaling a score, and Touchdown Jesus is the name the world knows.
- 1964Vivica A. Fox: producer of the Wrong films
Born here, raised downstate: Vivica Anjanetta Fox was born in South Bend on 30 July 1964, the daughter of a pharmaceutical technician and a private-school administrator; her parents relocated to the Indianapolis area soon after her birth, and the raising — and the acting start that followed from it…
- 1964–1972Lloyd M. Allen: the mayor who inherited the closing
He was inaugurated on 1 January 1964. Between his election and his inauguration the ground of his administration was laid: on 9 December the Tribune broke the Studebaker closing, and on 20 December the last South Bend Studebaker rolled off the line.
- 1964–1982Newman and Altman: the dealers who bought the Avanti
Early in 1964 Altman, Newman and a few other investors bought the Avanti name and Studebaker's leftover inventories of parts, production tooling and plant buildings in South Bend, and hired twenty Studebaker employees from the six thousand put out of work when the company shut down.
- 1964–2006The Avanti's afterlife: Newman & Altman and the Avanti II
Leo Newman and Nate Altman, longtime South Bend Studebaker-Packard dealers, agreed with the company — the agreement is dated 1 July 1964 in the marque's newsletter account…
- 1964–todayLaSalle and Jackson: the Converted High Schools
Jackson: Andrew Jackson High School was built in 1964 and opened in 1965 at 5001 South Miami Street, at Jackson Road, on the city's south side; its first class graduated in 1967.
- 1965Palm Sunday · the evening the tornadoes crossed the county
The city of South Bend was not struck on Palm Sunday 1965; its county was a corridor: The outbreak of 11 April 1965 was Indiana's deadliest tornado day — 137 people killed in the state, among more than 260 killed across six states (the Weather Service's outbreak page gives 261 deaths in all…
- 1965Palm Sunday 1965 · the outbreak's edge crosses the county's south
The deadliest tornado outbreak in Indiana's history — 137 Hoosiers killed — touched St. Joseph County with one long track: Late on Palm Sunday, 11 April 1965, an F3 tornado ran from northeast of Knox to south of South Bend across Starke, Marshall, St. Joseph and Elkhart counties — 35.6 miles on the ground in the Weather Service's survey.
- 1965Toro, recovered from a car trunk
The theft: In 1965 the Potawatomi Zoo made national news, once. Vandals stole Toro, the zoo's ocelot, and the small spotted cat was found by South Bend city police in the trunk of a car.
- 1965Nicholas Sparks — the alumnus, at an alumnus's strength
Nicholas Sparks was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1965 and raised in Fair Oaks, California.
- 1965The Grammy record: three nominations for a band built elsewhere
Jr. Walker & the All Stars received three Grammy Award nominations and won none: "Shotgun" for Best Rhythm and Blues Recording (1965); "What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)" for Best R&B Instrumental Performance (1969) — a vocal record filed, to the act's own chroniclers' amusement, among the instrumentals…
- 1965The public courses, stated plainly
Elbel Golf Course is a municipal course: the city parks department's own chronology records Elbel Park purchased in 1961 for $35,000, $800,000 in bonds sold in 1963 for the Pinhook, Elbel, and Voorde work, and "1965 — Elbel Golf Course opens at the cost of $550,000."
- 1965–1989IU South Bend's Schurz Library
The boundary note: Indiana University South Bend's library began, with the campus, in Northside Hall, and became a federal documents depository in 1965.
- 1965–todayThe literary institutions: journals and presses
Indiana University South Bend's literary and visual arts journal began publishing in 1965 under the name Realm ; the university archives' finding aid holds Realm for 1965–1967 and the journal under its present name, Analecta , from 1972…
- 1966The two great deeds in kind: a company's memory, and a mansion
The Studebaker deed: When Studebaker ended automobile production in 1966, the company gave the City of South Bend the two things it had kept longest: its vehicle collection — begun by Clement Studebaker in the nineteenth century, holding the carriages of presidents and the family's own Conestoga wagon…
- 1966REAL Services
Founding: REAL Services was founded in 1966 by Lester J. "Les" Fox, and its own history states the cause plainly: Studebaker's closing in the mid-1960s had stranded the plant's oldest workers, and Resources for Enriching Adult Living — REAL — was the response.
- 1966United Health Services of St. Joseph County
Its Form 990 gives its year of formation as 1966 and the federal exemption record is dated March 1968; the United Way's published legacy history likewise names United Health Services among the agencies established in its mid-century decades.
- 1966The gift of 1966 and the wandering years
The deed: In 1966, the year the last Studebaker was built, the Studebaker Corporation deeded its original vehicle collection and its archives to the City of South Bend, "with the agreement that the city would provide a suitable home to house and display the collection," in the words of the museum's archivist Andrew Beckman.
- 1966The Emmy record: two wins, one nomination, and one claim that fails
The first win came at the start of his career — Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Drama for 1966, for an episode of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, "The Game" — after nominations in the same category in 1963 (for Ben Casey) and 1964.
- 1966Scottsdale Mall: the city's own mall
The Tribune announced the "all-weather shopping center" on July 3, 1966, for the southeast corner of Miami and Ireland, beside the Scottsdale housing addition that gave it its name.
- 1966–1973The prisoners: Kernan and Kasler
James Helms Kasler: the second pillar, cross-referenced to his own entry above — shot down 8 August 1966, held six and a half years until 4 March 1973, and decorated as a prisoner with his third Air Force Cross and his second Silver Star, both for resistance under coercion and torture.
- 1966–2021April Pulley Sayre — the resident nature writer
April Pulley Sayre was born in Greenville, South Carolina, on 11 April 1966, trained as a biologist at Duke, and took her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2000.
- 1966–2022Vietnam: the thirty-one verified a third way, the thirty-second man named, and the accounting check run
He is James Wayne Emerson , United States Army, born 23 July 1944, home of record South Bend, Washington , killed 25 August 1966, his name on Panel 10E, Line 38 of the Wall.
- 1966–todayThe company's memory, in one line
The company's own collection of its vehicles and archives, given to the city in 1966, is held by the Studebaker National Museum at 201 Chapin Street — its record, including the last South Bend car and the last Hamilton car, both preserved there, belongs to the Museums leg of this history and is not retold here.
- 1966–todayThe Studebaker National Museum — where the presidents' carriages live
The collection's road: The Studebaker Corporation donated its historic collection to the City of South Bend in 1966, when the company closed; the gift is put at 33 vehicles in the visitor bureau's telling and 37 in Hemmings' history of the museum, and both figures stand here as printed there.
- 1967First jets: United's Caravelles, January 1967
Jets reached the bend on a milk run: In January 1967 United Air Lines began flying Sud Aviation Caravelles through South Bend on the route Chicago O'Hare–South Bend–Fort Wayne–Newark and back — French-built twinjets on a four-city chain that gave two Indiana cities their first jet service on the same airplane.
- 1967The Black press of South Bend · The Reformer, and the papers that were not this city's
A weekly of the community's own, verified from two directions: South Bend's Black newspaper of record was The Reformer , founded in 1967 — the Notre Dame Scholastic of 15 December 1967 already calls it "a weekly newspaper," in the act of covering the Phillips fund…
- 1967Anthony Johnson: Formed at Adams, the Panthers' First Thousand-Yard Rusher
Anthony Scott Johnson's tie is the schoolboy formation, and the record states it exactly: the registers give his birth as October 25, 1967, in Indianapolis, while the Jacksonville Jaguars' own signing release called him "a native of South Bend" — the schooling explains the wording.
- 1967The city's own: All-America City, twice
The National Civic League's All-America City Award belongs to the city itself, and the League's own winners list gives South Bend two years: 1967 and 2011.
- 1967–1968July 1967 and April 1968 · the shooting of Melvin Phillips, and four thousand marchers
The summer the Lake's grievances came due in one night: The LaSalle Park neighborhood — "the Lake" — entered the summer of 1967 with a drained lake turned city dump still burning beside it, unpaved streets, and a renewal plan that had already taken homes.
- 1967–1968July 1967 and April 1968 · the shooting, the curfew, and the march
The city's modern unrest, at this section's size: In July 1967 , after a South Bend police officer shot Melvin Phillips , the city's west side rose in nights of disorder that ended with a curfew imposed at 10:07 p.m. and a request for the National Guard…
- 1967–2001The October tornadoes · 1967's single, and the outbreak of 24 October 2001
October is not tornado season in northern Indiana, which is what makes the county's two October entries the systematic record's outliers: On 24 October 1967 a lone F1 touched down in St. Joseph County at 5:40 p.m. and hurt no one.
- 1967–2019Two fairs: Leeper Park and Art Beat
The Leeper Park Art Fair began in 1967 in the riverside park north of downtown, sponsored by the St. Joe Valley Watercolor Society, founded in 1959 by the artist and teacher Jozef Wrobel, who began the fair.
- 1967–todayThe training pipeline: youth orchestra and community school
The youth orchestra: The South Bend Youth Symphony Orchestras were formed in 1967 by the two institutions that between them ran the city's classrooms — the South Bend Community School Corporation and Indiana University South Bend, acting cooperatively — to give junior-high-level musicians a high-calibre all-city ensemble.
- 1968Ivy Tech South Bend — the Working College, in a Studebaker Plant and a Retired High School
In South Bend, in the college’s own campus history, “It began in 1968 on West Sample Street in the old Studebaker plant while a nearby unused high school was enlarged and remodeled.
- 1968Big Brothers Big Sisters: the Agency That Closed in 2025
Founding: The mentoring agency's founding year is 1968 — the year its federal charity record carries for Big Brothers Big Sisters Southern Lake Michigan Region Inc., and the same year the agency's own arithmetic gives: when it closed in June 2025 it announced, on its own page, that it was shuttering "after 57 years."
- 1968Robert Kennedy's two South Bend days, 1968
On Thursday, April 4, 1968, about a thousand people met his plane at the airport — the Tribune reported the crowd "screamed" and "squealed" as he got off with Ethel…
- 1968A medical school on Angela Boulevard: IU School of Medicine—South Bend
The regional campus that became a research address: Indiana University began offering medical classes in South Bend in 1968 — the trial run, in the university's own magazine's phrase, for the School of Medicine's regional campus model.
- 1968Frankie's BBQ: the Washington Street smokehouse of 1968
Its founding is carried by a 2026 feature at attributed strength: opened in 1968; founded by James Charles Trotter Sr. and Frankie Fellows; run now by their son, Sean Pierre Trotter.
- 1968–1970The Tower on the Oliver's Corner: Holiday Inn, Magnuson, Aloft
Construction began in 1968 on a twenty-five-story bank tower — the American National Bank Building, later the Valley American Bank Building, the Chase Tower, and today Liberty Tower — topped out in 1970.
- 1968–todayTranspo: the public corporation
1968: The South Bend Public Transportation Corporation is a municipal corporation, and its officers date its public ownership themselves: Transpo's general manager and CEO, briefing the South Bend Common Council's Public Works committee on 8 August 2016 in the city's own minutes, stated that Transpo is a municipal…
- 1969Susan Choi — the novelist
The tie, exactly: Choi was born in South Bend in 1969 — to a Korean father and a Jewish mother — and was raised in South Bend and in Houston, Texas, where the family moved during her childhood.
- 1969Susan Choi — six novels from a South Bend birth
Susan Choi was born in South Bend on 28 January 1969, to a Korean father and a Jewish mother, and was raised in South Bend and in Houston, Texas, where the family moved during her childhood — Famous People carries the tie at that exact strength, and this entry keeps it.
- 1969The Academy Awards: Sydney Pollack, raised here
(1969); Best Director and Best Picture for Tootsie (1982); Best Picture, as a producer of Michael Clayton (2007); and a last Best Picture nomination, posthumous, for The Reader (2008), which reached him after his death on 26 May 2008.
- 1969–todayTyler: the December 1969 Chevrolet store in Niles
"In December of 1969 our company was founded as a Chevrolet dealership by our father Tim Tyler and his partner Terry Linville."