South Bend, Indiana · 20th century
1980s
62 dated events in 1980s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
20th century 62 dated mentions
1980s
- 1980Mark di Suvero: Keepers of the Fire
The work: The city's signature piece of public art is thirty-two feet of red-painted steel standing in the St. Joseph River by the dam outside Century Center: Keepers of the Fire (1980), by Mark di Suvero, the American sculptor whose monumental I-beam constructions stand in museum grounds and cities across the country.
- 1980Simeri's Old Town Tap — and Dorbin's after it
Forty-four years: Simeri's Old Town Tap, at 1505 West Indiana Avenue on the west side, dated itself "a neighborhood tradition since 1980," and WNDU's account of its last day gives the family frame: founded by the mother of the family in the 1980s, run in its later years by a brother-and-sister team…
- 1980Tippecanoe Place: the mansion's restaurant, 1980–2026
Continental Restaurant Systems bought the mansion in 1979 and spent $2 million converting it; Tippecanoe Place the restaurant opened in 1980, in the Tribune's January 2026 account of its closing.
- 1980–1982United States v. Mercer — the opinion read whole; the negative verified
What the opinion says: Mercer pleaded guilty to bank robbery under 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a) at a plea colloquy on April 16, 1980.
- 1980–todayThe Consent Decree: the Corporation's Institutional Course
The case: In February 1980 the United States sued the corporation — United States v. South Bend Community School Corporation, No. 3:80-cv-00035 in the Northern District of Indiana — under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act.
- 1980–todayThe public art program: commissions and their process
The Committee for Art in Public Places, chaired by Andrew W. Nickle, led the effort that brought Mark di Suvero's Keepers of the Fire to the riverfront in 1980 — the sculpture stands in Artists…
- 1981The smallest patients: the neonatal unit and couplet care, 1981
The mother stays in the room: Newborn intensive care at Memorial began in 1981, and its advancement was a way of arranging care as much as a technology.
- 1981–1992The independent thread — Nine Feet Tall , and an animation pioneer
Computer Creations (1981): The other independent entry is earlier and stranger.
- 1981–todayTrinity School at Greenlawn
Founded: Trinity School was founded in 1981 by the People of Praise, the charismatic Christian community itself founded in South Bend in 1971, with fewer than thirty students.
- 1982Pete Buttigieg — Mayor Pete, then the Cabinet
Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg was born in South Bend on January 19, 1982, the only child of two Notre Dame professors — Joseph A. Buttigieg, a scholar of English literature, and Jennifer Anne Montgomery…
- 1982Saint Mary's Cushwa-Leighton Library
The boundary note: Saint Mary's College, across the river, opened its Cushwa-Leighton Library in 1982 — construction began in October 1980, the building was completed in June 1982, and it was dedicated on 3 September 1982 — named for Margaret Hall Cushwa of the class of 1930 and Mary Lou Morris Leighton.
- 1982Chapin Park — an Estate Become a Neighborhood
The district: The Chapin Park Historic District, listed on the National Register on 4 February 1982, holds some 270 buildings on the nomination's count — 260 contributing buildings and three contributing sites in the Register's summary…
- 1982The river's strangest numbers: 10.90, twice — then 12.70
Until February 2018, the highest crest ever recorded on the gauge stood at 10.90 feet — and it was reached twice: on 15 March 1982, in the snowmelt flood the Geological Survey documented across three states, and again, to the same tenth of a foot, on 6 January 1993.
- 1982–1993The river's record before the record · 1982 and 1993
The St. Joseph River's documented crest history at South Bend, as the gauges carry it, is shorter than the city's memory of floods — and the gap is printed plainly: Until February 2018, the highest crest ever recorded at South Bend stood at 10.90 feet, and it was reached twice: on 15 March 1982 and again on 6 January 1993.
- 1982–2001Golden Dome Productions (1982–2001) — the city's production company
Golden Dome Productions began inside the university's broadcasting arm — Bazil O'Hagan, who came to WNDU as chief engineer in 1956 and rose to president and general manager of Michiana Telecasting Corporation, the university's broadcasting company, created it, in the Indiana Broadcast History Archive's words, as a…
- 1982–2021The library on the wire: catalog, web page, and Studio 304
It purchased its first computer system, from CLSI, in 1982, and in 1983 became one of Indiana's first public libraries with an online catalog.
- 1983Four buildings in one November
The building wave: In November 1983 the library opened four new branch buildings in a single month — Tutt and River Park first, then Western and LaSalle — as its history records.
- 1983The Club and the Program
The club's own history is short and printed whole: "Our organization was established in 1983. We rode together for 17 years as the South Bend Snowmobiles Club."
- 1983Studebaker: Less Than They Promised (1983) — the documentary of the closing
The standing: The Peabody Awards' own winners' book lists the film under WBBM-TV, Chicago, and Craig's Chicago Tribune obituary states the honour plainly: he won a Peabody Award in 1983 for "Studebaker: Less Than They Promised," about the 1963 collapse of the Studebaker automobile empire in South Bend and the human impact of its closing.
- 1983The case this city sent to the Supreme Court
Between March 1983 and March 1985, about eleven people were arrested there under Indiana's public indecency statute, Indiana Code § 35-45-4-1, for appearing in a state of nudity; raids on March 27, 1985 ended the live performances.
- 1983–todayThe works divided — Bosch, Honeywell, and the wheels-and-brakes plant
The succession, printed once here: The Bendix Corporation's own course out of the city is told across this section: headquarters to Detroit in the late 1930s and to Southfield in 1971; the corporation bought by the Allied Corporation in 1983; AlliedSignal formed in the 1985 merger…
- 1984The river in use: the race reborn, the lights, and the front yard
A generation later the city dug it out again and rebuilt it as a river work of a new kind: the East Race Waterway, opened in 1984, some 2,000 feet of course — 1,900 feet from start to finish in the visitors' bureau's telling…
- 1984The remaking
The recovery, when it came, was built out of the ruins and the river: Its symbolic first act was the East Race Waterway of 1984 — the old mill race dug out and reborn as a downtown whitewater course, billed as the first artificial one in North America.
- 1984Before the web: the bulletin boards
SouthWinds ran the longest of the early boards, 1984 to 1996. Gerry Opperman's River City Network appears on two numbers across 1985 to 1994, on PCBoard and then TBBS software.
- 1984The East Race runs again, 1984
The opening: In 1984 the city dug its buried millrace back out and made it a river again.
- 1984Sunburst: the race that finished on the fifty-yard line
The institution: The Sunburst Races began in 1984 and grew into the largest footrace gathering on the city's calendar, held on the first Saturday of June.
- 1984A whitewater course in the mill race
The East Race — the channel dug in the 1840s to power the city's industry, filled and forgotten after its working life — was dug out and rebuilt from August 1982, and in 1984 the city reopened it as an engineered whitewater course through downtown, a drop of about twelve feet in a run the sources state at 1,900 feet…
- 1984CJ's Pub: downtown's burger tavern since 1984
Its own account, carried on its site and menu, runs: RJ — an entertainer and people person his whole life — opened CJ's on Labor Day 1984 and made it the institution it is, on the then-novel concept of the best and biggest burger around, the "Super Pub Burger."
- 1984The East Race: whitewater through downtown
In the early 1980s, under Parent's administration, the city dug its own millrace back out and rebuilt it as a whitewater course, and in 1984 the East Race Waterway opened: by the visitor bureaus' account, the first man-made whitewater course in North America, 1,900 feet of Class 2 rapids running through the middle of…
- 1984–1988Building the Cove, 1984–1988
The chase: South Bend's leaders began seeking a minor-league team in 1984, thirty-six years after the Twins' single summer and four decades after the Blue Sox had shown what a team could mean here.
- 1984–todayThe East Race — Olympic trials water in the middle of downtown
The place: In 1984 the city reopened the old East Race of the St. Joseph River — the mill channel that had powered its industry — as a engineered whitewater course through downtown: a drop of about twelve feet in a run whose length the sources state differently (the visitor bureau and the city give 1,900 feet…
- 1985Irwin Press and Rod Ganey — the professors who measured the patient
The founding act: Press Ganey was founded in 1985 by Irwin Press and Rod Ganey, two professors at the University of Notre Dame, on the company's own history: the belief that when organizations listen to people, they can make their lives easier…
- 1985The schools' foundations: from Public Education Foundation to the Education Alliance
The older began in 1985 as the South Bend School Boosters, an advocacy effort formed by Louis Baker to save School Field stadium from demolition, and grew into the South Bend Alumni Association…
- 1985Press Ganey: the measurement of the patient's voice, 1985
The founding is the company's own history's: Press Ganey was founded in 1985 by Irwin Press and Rod Ganey, two professors at the University of Notre Dame, just north of South Bend.
- 1985The unnamed · the Howard Johnson John Doe, and the names that came back
The Howard Johnson John Doe: On June 9, 1985, a family walking their dog behind the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge — a hotel that stood in the area of Cleveland Road and State Road 933, and is no longer there — smelled something terrible, went to investigate, and found a dead man.
- 1985Mark Hazinski: The Table Tennis Olympian
Mark Hazinski was born April 20, 1985, in South Bend — the Tribune's Athens photograph caption calls him "Mishawaka's Mark Hazinski," and both addresses stand, birth here and the neighboring city's claim beside it.
- 1985–2012The second unwinding · 1985, 1989, 2011
Studebaker's closing was the catastrophe; the decades after it were an unwinding, plant by plant: In 1985 White Motor closed the original Oliver works — Factory No. 1 on the river, the plant of the chilled plow that had made South Bend a factory city alongside Studebaker.
- 1985–2026The Howard Johnson John Doe — the documented silence since the exhumation
The Unsolved file carries the man found shot to death on June 9, 1985, behind the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge at Cleveland Road and State Road 933, buried at Tutt Cemetery, and exhumed on September 15, 2025, by the county police and the Coroner's Office for genetic genealogy, Detective Allan Barnes named in the coverage.
- 1985–todayThe county sheriffs
St. Joseph County , decided 9 June 2015, records that Sheriff Michael Grzegorek — elected in 2010 — had appointed as his assistant chief a man who had himself been sheriff from 1985 to 1998.
- 1985–todayPress Ganey — the survey company in Ignition Park
Founded: Press Ganey was founded in South Bend in 1985 by two Notre Dame professors: Irwin Press, a medical anthropologist, and Rod Ganey, a sociologist and statistician.
- 1986Granger Community Church (Boundary — Granger)
Boundary: Granger Community Church was founded in 1986 by Mark and Sheila Beeson in their living room in Granger, holding its first public service in December 1986…
- 1986The clinic that stayed: the Sister Maura Brannick Health Center
In October 1986, with the medical center's sponsorship, the first West Washington Street Health Center opened in a converted garage of some four hundred square feet…
- 1986The city's own hall: the South Bend Community Hall of Fame
The South Bend Community Hall of Fame was begun in 1986 by the South Bend Alumni Association — founded in 1985 to support the city's public schools — to recognize individuals whose accomplishments have left a lasting impact on South Bend…
- 1986The South Bend Community Hall of Fame: carried in the halls
The cross-reference: The city's standing civic honor, the South Bend Community Hall of Fame, was begun in 1986 by the South Bend Alumni Association and elects those who lived and worked in South Bend for at least ten years; its plaques hang at Century Center, and its annual banquet reached its thirty-ninth edition on 13 October 2026.
- 1986–1988The takeover: the commission takes the branches, 1986–1988
The patronage system's end began in 1986, and it was announced as a service scandal as much as a political one: the Indianapolis Business Journal's retrospective states the sequence plainly…
- 1986–todayAM General — the headquarters
What is in South Bend, and what is not: AM General's corporate headquarters stands at 105 N. Niles Avenue, South Bend — the address on the company's own releases — where it came in February 1990, the headquarters having moved to South Bend from Livonia in 1986, on the Tribune 's record.
- 1987Four Winds Field — the ballpark the fans voted best in the country
The Sports history in this record owns the park whole: its opening as the Stanley Coveleski Regional Stadium (the year stands open in the Sports record — 1987 in the visitor bureau's account, 1988 in the club history's season line), the 2012 transformation, and the 48-million-dollar renovation whose second deck opened in 2026.
- 1987Ferrettie/Baugo Creek County Park
Henry R. Ferrettie/Baugo Creek County Park — named for a former county commissioner, on Ash Road at Osceola on the county's eastern edge — opened to the public in 1987…
- 1987–1988Copshaholm — the Oliver Mansion as a house museum
The printed record holds two datings of the gift, and both stand: the National Park Service's additional documentation states that the home and its contents were donated to the forerunner of today's History Museum in the 1970s, while the fuller chronology has the transfer completed at the end of the line…
- 1987–1988The Cove: the ballpark that taught the minors how to feel
Stanley Coveleski Regional Stadium went up on the south edge of downtown for 11 million city dollars, construction completed in April 1987 and the gates opened July 2, 1987; its first tenant season came the following spring, 1988, as the South Bend White Sox.
- 1987–2025Accreditation: Held Continuously Since 1987
Lead: The Potawatomi Zoo was first accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in 1987, and it has been accredited ever since — "continuously accredited since 1987," in the zoo's own published words, a standing fewer than a quarter of the country's zoos held when the zoo's director counted them for a county…
- 1988The Center for the Homeless
Founding: The Center for the Homeless was founded in 1988 by Father Edward "Monk" Malloy, the president of the University of Notre Dame, together with city and business leaders — the founding account is Notre Dame Magazine's, and the Center's own materials agree in substance.
- 1988The big rooms of the 1980s: Mitchell's Indiana Club and Pardner's
Its documented exemplar is Mitchell's Indiana Club, which frequently hosted Notre Dame and Saint Mary's senior-class events — the Weddingless Reception and the Senior Christmas Formal among them, both, the senior class president told the Observer , events that "went over really well"…
- 1988The Hoosier Lottery arrives
On November 8, 1988, the state's voters lifted the ban, approving the lottery referendum by 62 percent. The General Assembly ratified the Lottery Act on May 3, 1989, and the governor signed it a week later; a director and a commission were in place by midsummer.
- 1988–1997Joe E. Kernan: the comptroller who became governor
He took office on 3 January 1988. (His earlier life — Notre Dame, the Navy, six years a prisoner of war in Vietnam — belongs to his profile in the People record; what belongs here is the mayor.)
- 1988–1997The White Sox years, 1988–1997
The arrival: The South Bend White Sox took the field in the Midwest League in 1988, and won the league championship in their second season, 1989 — the city's first baseball title since the Blue Sox' playoff championship of 1952.
- 1988–2008The Zoo's Fixtures: Farm, Carousel, Train, and the Winter Lights
The city's published profile of the zoo dates the Zoo Farm — the petting-zoo farm in the line of the 1949 farm barn — to 1988, and the seasonal butterfly exhibit, "Butterflies in Living Color," to a first opening in 2008.
- 1989The choral institutions: Chamber Singers, Vesper Chorale, and the college choirs
Its founding year is a printed conflict: the ensemble's own website carries both "Established In 1987" and a "38th Season" banner — the thirty-eighth season, 2026–27, counts from 1989 — while Menk's biographies and Saint Mary's news releases state that she founded the choir and has directed it since January 1989.
- 1989–1992The missing · two names the record still carries
Sargent Micek, 22 — South Bend, May 4, 1989. Micek left his home that day and went out to a couple of bars with friends.
- 1989–2005The County's Two Executions: The Third Name
90 on the Department of Correction's list: offense dated March 4, 1989; sentenced May 11, 1990; crime, murder in two counts, with battery and criminal confinement; county of conviction, Lake; executed by lethal injection on September 28, 2005.
- 1989–2024IU South Bend: one trust's decade, and the banker's gift that named a school
The unfigured and the collective: The campus's library bears a fortune's name on a gift whose amount no source reached publishes: Franklin D. Schurz, chairman of Schurz Communications and publisher of the South Bend Tribune, donated the money to complete construction of the Franklin D. Schurz Library, dedicated in…
- 1989–todayAshley Flowers: born in South Bend, built in Indianapolis
The South Bend start: Ashley Flowers was born on 19 December 1989 in South Bend, Indiana.